Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild Writing

[Mike Frysinger]

On Monday 21 January 2008, Thomas Kahle wrote:
> i'm not sure if this is the right place for my question, if not, please
> tell me the right one.

i dont think there's a mailing list for this stuff, but there is an irc 
channel (#gentoo-dev-help iirc)

> I'm trying to write an ebuild for a math software called polymake. It
> uses a non-autotools, makefile and perl based configuration mechanism.
> This thing will ask questions to the user during the make process.
> These questions can be answered using the information from make.conf, so
> it should be automated?

ebuilds should always be automated

> Now my question is: How to do it in a clean way?
> a) Patch the makefile?

it sounded like you can write the answers into make.conf ahead of time ?

> b) Use a tool like "expect" to answer the questions?

yikes, i doubt most people nowadays know what expect is let alone how to use 
it :)

you can usually cheat if there is a set # of questions and they'd always be 
asked in the same order ...
./some-curious-command.sh <<-EOF
first answer
${second_answer_from_a_var}
$(third answer from a command)
EOF
-mike