INDEX file

Currently a list of ports is kept in ${INDEXDIR}/${INDEXFILE}.

This format has been set in stone due to certain tools that try to parse it for information, and until a complete list of these tools is found we can't do much about sanitising the format.

Tools that read INDEX

Tool	Description of behaviour
portsnap	ColinPercival has explained that extra fields must be stripped for <9, maybe he can get patches in before release. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=159946
make search
pkg_version	Only reads as far as it needs to -- not a problem adding extra fields to the end

Tools that rely on the output from make describe

Tool	Description of behaviour

Tools that generate INDEX

Tool	Description of behaviour
ports-mgmt/p5-FreeBSD-Portindex
print/makeindex