= Tips and Tricks for committers =

This page provides some useful hints how to work with our infrastructure. And they can also make your work a lot easier.

== Set svn properties automatically on new Portfiles ==

In the configuration for your Subversion client, enable automatic property setting and, for all files named Portfile, setting "svn:eol-style" to "native" and "svn:keywords" to "Id".  If you are not using Subversion's own svn command-line client, see its documentation.  For svn, you can make the appropriate changes by editing `~/.subversion/config` as follows:

{{{
...

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

...

[auto-props]
Portfile = svn:eol-style=native;svn:keywords=Id
}}}


== Apply patches directly from Trac URL ==

=== Installation ===
Add the following functions to your `.bashrc` in order to apply patches directly from Trac.
 
{{{
function trac-get {
    local url=$1
    local dir=$2

    if [[ -z $dir ]]; then
        dir=.
    fi  

    curl "$url?format=raw" --create-dirs -o $dir/$(basename $1)
}

function trac-patch {
    local cmd=""
    while [[ $1 == -* ]]; do
        if [[ "$1" == "--" ]]; then
            break
        fi

        cmd="$cmd $1"
        shift
    done

    if [[ -z $cmd ]]; then
        cmd="-p0"
    fi  

    trac-get $1
    patch $cmd < $(basename $1)
}
}}}

=== Usage ===

Use like this:
 1. Copy the URL to the patch from the Trac ticket page
 1. Switch to the ports directory
{{{
$ cd $(port dir foo)
}}}
 1. Apply the patch
{{{
$ trac-patch http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile.diff
}}}

You can also add options to `trac-patch` which will get passed through to the patch tool. This is especially useful when the patch needs another prefix level.
{{{
$ trac-patch -p1 http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile.diff
}}}
If you don't add any option, `-p0` is used as a default. This should be the most common case.

`trac-get` can also download to another directory. If the directory does not yet exist, it will be created. Just add a second parameter with the name of the directory. If you omit the second parameter, the current directory is used.
{{{
$ trac-get http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile new-port
}}}

== Do Explorative Programming in tclsh with Readline Support ==

tclsh does not offer readline support by itself, which is quite annoying. When writing portfiles or tinkering with changes to Macports base, I need to experiment in a Tcl shell all the time to tests small things. But for that, command history and Emacs-like navigation within the line are essential. Unfortunately tclsh does not offer this.

Solution: use port {{{rlwrap}}} together with tclsh. When you invoke tclsh via rlwrap you get all the convenience you know from bash.
{{{
rlwrap tclsh
}}}
Or, put even an alias into ~/.bashrc
{{{
alias tclsh='rlwrap tclsh'
}}}
and don't think about it ever again.

== Syntax Coloring When Editing Portfiles with Text Editors ==

See [BbeditLanguageModule this page] for setting up BBEdit or TextWrangler to have a MacPorts Language Module