Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 22:30:53 -0700 From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@freebsd.org> To: current@freebsd.org Subject: contrib SW, the policy! Message-ID: <2072.835767053@critter.tfs.com>
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Well, here it is, the official word on contrib software. Contact peter@freebsd.org or phk@freebsd.org for more info. At this stage I think we can say that "discussion is futile" :-) Poul-Henning -------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Contributed software" Some parts of the FreeBSD distribution consists of software that is actively being maintained outside the FreeBSD project. For historical reasons, we call this "contributed" software. Some examples are perl, gcc and patch. Over the last couple of years, various methods have been used in dealing with this type of software and all have some number of advantages and drawbacks. No clear winner has emerged. Since this is the case, after some debate one of these methods has been selected as the "official" method and will be required for future imports of software of this kind. Furthermore, it is strongly suggested that existing contrib software converge on this model over time as it has significant advantages over the old method, including the ability to easily obtain diffs relative to the "official" versions of the source by everyone (even without cvs access). This will make it significantly easier to return changes to the primary developers of the contributed software. Ultimately, however, it comes down to the people actually doing the work. If using this model is particularly unsuited to the package being dealt with, exceptions to these rules may be granted only with the approval of the core team and with the general consensus of the other developers. The ability to maintain the package in the future will be a key issue in the decisions. The "Tcl" embeddable programming language will be used as example of how this model works: src/contrib/tcl contains the source as distributed by the maintainers of this package. Parts that are entirely not applicable for FreeBSD can be removed. In the case of Tcl, the "mac", "win" and "compat" subdirectories were eliminated before the import src/lib/libtcl contains only a "bmake style" Makefile that uses the standard bsd.lib.mk makefile rules to produce the library and install the documentation. src/usr.bin/tclsh contains only a bmake style Makefile which will produce and install the "tclsh" program and its associated man-pages using the standard bsd.prog.mk rules. src/tools/tcl contains a couple of shell-scrips that can be of help when the tcl software needs updated, these are not part of the build or installed software. The important thing here is that the "src/contrib/tcl" directory is created according to the rules: It is supposed to contain the sources as distributed (on a proper CVS vendor-branch) with as few FreeBSD-specific changes as possible. The 'easy-import' tool on freefall will assist in doing the import but, if there are any doubts on how to go about it, it is imperative that you ask first and not blunder ahead and hope it "works out". CVS is not forgiving of import accidents and a fair amount of effort is required to back out major mistakes. Because of some unfortunate design limitations with CVS's vendor branches, it is required that "official" patches from the vendor be applied to the original distributed sources and the result re-imported onto the vendor branch again. Official patches should never be patched into the the FreeBSD checked out version and "committed", as this destroys the vendor branch coherency and makes imports future versions rather difficult as there will be conflicts. Since many packages contain files that are meant for compatibility with other architectures and environments that FreeBSD, it is permissible to remove parts of the dist tree that are of no interest to FreeBSD in order to save space. Files containing copyright notices and release-note kind of information applicable to the remaining files shall >not< be removed. If it seems easier, the "bmake" makefiles can be produced from the dist tree automatically by some utility, something which would hopefully make it even easier to upgrade to a new version. If this is done, be sure to check in such utilities (as necessary) in the src/tools directory along with the port itself so that it's available to future maintainers. In the src/contrib/tcl level directory, a file called README.FreeBSD should be added and it should states things like: - Which files have been left out - Where the original distribution was obtained from and/or the official master site. - Where to send patches back to the original authors - Perhaps an overview of the FreeBSD-specific changes that have been made. FreeBSD Core-team. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | phk@FreeBSD.ORG FreeBSD Core-team. http://www.freebsd.org/~phk | phk@login.dknet.dk Private mailbox. whois: [PHK] | phk@ref.tfs.com TRW Financial Systems, Inc. Future will arrive by its own means, progress not so.
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