From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 6 03:08:27 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A4166E8C for ; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 03:08:27 +0000 (UTC) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8B6AB2A11 for ; Fri, 6 Jun 2014 03:08:27 +0000 (UTC) Received: from u10-2-32-011.office.norse-data.com (unknown [50.204.88.51]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 3B4AE1A3C51 for ; Thu, 5 Jun 2014 20:08:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <539130B3.9030604@freebsd.org> Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 20:08:35 -0700 From: Alfred Perlstein Organization: FreeBSD User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Who was the mental genius References: <20140605211831.GA90310@spectrum.skysmurf.nl> <5390E62E.6090807@madpilot.net> <6CEF0183772C97582B196466@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local> In-Reply-To: <6CEF0183772C97582B196466@Pauls-MacBook-Pro.local> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2014 03:08:27 -0000 On 6/5/14, 7:32 PM, Paul Schmehl wrote: > --On June 5, 2014 at 11:50:38 PM +0200 Guido Falsi > wrote: > >> On 06/05/14 23:43, Paul Schmehl wrote: >>> --On June 5, 2014 at 11:18:31 PM +0200 "A.J. 'Fonz' van Werven" >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Paul Schmehl wrote: >>>> >>>>> That decided it was a good idea to completely break ports to force >>>>> people to upgrade? You couldn't come up with a warning system >>>>> instead >>>>> of outright breaking ports? The idiots are apparently running the >>>>> asylum. {{sigh}} >>>> >>>> It might help to know exactly what you're talking about... What is it >>>> that >>>> broke? >>>> >>> >>> The change to make that causes this when you run pkg commands or try to >>> build ports: >>> >>> Unknown modifier 't' >>> >>> It was done deliberately to break ports so that people would be forced >>> to upgrade to a supported version. >>> >>> >> >> No it was not done "deliberately" >> >> Newer freebsd version moved to a newer make utility, and support for the >> old one has been dropped after support for all old releases containing >> it was ceased. >> > > So they dropped the support accidentally? Is this really the time to > argue semantics? > >> Which releases are supported and for how long is well known, and >> published in here when a new release is published: >> >> http://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup >> >> The updates are free, as in "no payment needed". What's keeping you from >> performing a binary update of the base system every year or so? >> > > I have two hosts on the internet for which the backup system failed. > I didn't catch it right away, so now I'm several days behind on > backups. I need to install a new system, but it requires ports I > don't yet have installed. So now I have two options; upgrade with my > fingers crossed and hope it works or scramble to find some way to > backup before I upgrade just in case the upgrade fails. > >> Running such an old system as any of the unsupported releases is also >> most probably exposing you to security vulnerabilities. >> > > First of all, 8.3 is not an old system. Secondly, you used to be able > to run "old" systems for a long time after support was dropped without > encountering issues like this. Finally, I'm a port maintainer of a > fair number of ports, so FreeBSD isn't free for me. I put a lot of > time into it. > > When such a drastic change is made, it should be well advertised in > advance (think the pkgng announcement you get every time you install a > port) and not implemented in such a disruptive manner. It's clear from > the forum announcement that I linked to that I was not the only one > caught by surprise and that it didn't even work on supported versions > when the change was first implemented. > >> Sometimes to change things you need to break compatibility, the project >> did wait till it was coherent with what was promised before doing this. >> > > What you call "the project" is made up of people. SOMEONE should be > thinking through the impact on end users and helping to plan such > major transitions in a way that's least disruptive IF you want the > system to remain viable. > > Perhaps this is part of the reason adoption of FreeBSD has dropped so > dramatically over the years. I'm retiring in 18 months. When I > leave, the last FreeBSD system goes with me. No one is even > interested in learning it any more. FreeBSD used to rule the web. > Now it's Linux. There's a lesson in there for those that are > listening, but apparently "the project" is not. Which is sad, because > FreeBSD, IMNSHO, is a very good OS. > > There's no need to respond to this. I'm just venting. And clearly my > opinion doesn't matter anyway. I think your opinion matters. I agree I would be rudely surprised by such a breakage myself. That said we need to find a way to desupport things eventually. Any ideas on what should have been done that can be done in a short amount of code as possible? Perhaps there's some way to determine between the old and new makes and just add some kind of target like: # psuedo make(1) code: .ifndef THIS_IS_NEW_MAKE .BEGIN: echo your system is running an unsupported version of FreeBSD the last version to support this is r232423 echo please run "svn update -r232423" to get a working ports tree as of that date or upgrade to a more recent echo freebsd release using freebsd-update [[insert link to freebsd-update]] exit 1 .endif -Alfred