Several of the FreeBSD port maintenance tools, such as
portupgrade(1), rely on a database called
/usr/ports/INDEX which keeps track of
such items as port dependencies. INDEX
is created by the top-level
ports/Makefile via make
index, which descends into each port subdirectory
and executes make describe there. Thus, if
make describe fails in any port, no one can
generate INDEX, and many people will
quickly become unhappy.
It is important to be able to generate this file no
matter what options are present in
make.conf, so please avoid doing things
such as using .error statements when (for
instance) a dependency is not satisfied. (See Section 12.16, “Avoid Use of the .error
Construct”.)
If make describe produces a string
rather than an error message, you are probably safe. See
bsd.port.mk for the meaning of the
string produced.
Also note that running a recent version of
portlint (as specified in the next section)
will cause make describe to be run
automatically.
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Questions that are not answered by the
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sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.