Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:00:24 +0100 From: Matthias Andree <mandree@FreeBSD.org> To: gahr@FreeBSD.org Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Deprecation campaign Message-ID: <4D823E28.8070505@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20110317103637.GB7901@gahrfit.gahr.ch> References: <20110316233326.GA68341@lpthe.jussieu.fr> <4D818EFD.3060602@yandex.ru> <4D81D3AD.7040007@FreeBSD.org> <20110317103637.GB7901@gahrfit.gahr.ch>
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Am 17.03.2011 11:36, schrieb Pietro Cerutti:
>> all these efforts to rescue the ports are all good, but: do we actually
>> _need_ the ports? Just having one more port isn't a value in itself.
>
> It's a potential value. Having one port less is a potential loss.
Unless there is another one to take over.
>> And if yes, can someone step up to become maintainer of the port,
>> meaning, upgrade it to new versions, sort FreeBSD bug reports and
>> forward/file them with the upstream authors, and all that?
>
> Well, this is not how it works. There are a lot of old ports which
> are not being developped upstreams anymore. Probably nobody is
> interested in maintaining those, because there's nothing to do to those
> ports other than fixing potential build problems. However, this doesn't
> imply that the port is useless or that nobody's interested in using it.
> Not all consumers of FreeBSD ports follow ports@.
But exactly in such situations ("nothing to do") being a maintainer is
an extremely low effort because you hardly ever get input, but you are
sort of a godfather to the port in case it fails. And it's prudent for
a maintainer to ask for help anyways.
> I'd be very carful on killing ports. I agree on killing BROKEN ports
> where the distfiles are not fetchable anymore. In this case, nobody can
> benefit from having the (non working) port. But I wouldn't go further.
>
> And I'd welcome ANY effort to resurrect a port or make it workable
> again, even if it does not imply setting a real MAINTAINER.
I've done steps towards getting gpart working again, but I fear we'll be
running in circles unless ports are maintained. I've taken
maintainership of gpart now based on my own argument written above.
And while I haven't fully audited gpart or looked through its code, the
first impression was "not stellar but reasonably OK with some
portability headaches" so it's probably reasonably low profile, too.
Best regards
--
Matthias Andree
ports committer
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