[Mixmaster-devel] FreeBSD "port" of Mixmaster

[Lucky G. <sha...@cy...>]

Thinking about a creating a Mixmaster FreeBSD port I took a look at the
Install script. 

[In talking about a FreeBSD I mean in the FreeBSD Ports Collection
sense; Mixmaster of course already runs on FreeBSD. See
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html if you would like to know more
about what the Ports Collection is and why it matters).

The Install script poses somewhat of a problem to automating the port,
though I understand why the author went the route he took.

The biggest problem with the install script is that it does a good many
things in the same script:

1) determine if all the required dependencies are installed. Zlib,
ncurses, OpenSSL, IDEA. (Straight-forward with a FreeBSD port, since you
simply specify the dependencies in the port makefile and the master port
makefile will take care of all the dependencies for you, installing any
required ports that may not already be installed prior to continuing to
install your port. I am not sure what will happen if you require IDEA
and the base distribution of FreeBSD was built without support for IDEA,
but you /can/ require IDEA being available for a port).

2) check to see that if you are installing mix as root and if so tell
you to please not do that. This is awfully similar to a mailman
installation for which a port exists. FreeBSD will transparently handle
installing a port as a different user, creating any home directories
that are required. "mixmaster" should be registered as a known user with
a reserved UID. I have asked the FreeBSD ports folks to assign a UID to
mixmaster. 

3) query the user which of the various Mixmaster options to support. The
standard way of handling this on FreeBSD is to select reasonable
defaults, permitting the user to override the defaults with command line
flags such as "make -WITH_UNENCRYPTED="YES".

4) query the user for the abuse email address. (I wonder if one could
just assume "abuse", which may make sense if you assume mixmaster is
installed by root, no idea what to do if you want to permit installation
of the port by an unprivileged user. But I don't think unprivileged
users can install ports anyway, so this may be a non-issue. Still the
question if defaulting to "abuse" is acceptable remains. Could be
overridden at the command line as above.

5) Query the user for the password. This has to be done interactively
and can't be passed via the command line. I know that FreeBSD ports
permit interactive queries during install, but I don't know the "proper"
way of doing so. I trust somebody on the porters list might be willing
to fill in that gap.

6) Create the makefile. Standard port stuff.

7) Install Mixmaster in procmail. I suppose one could retain this part
of the script.

8) Remind the user to add their remailer admin key to adminkey.txt. This
is a tough one. The port would probably simply do the same thing: remind
the user.

9) I believe this would all be a lot easier if Mixmaster were to use
standard GNU config...

--Lucky, tentatively willing to take a stab at a port, but probably not
right away.