From owner-freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Wed May 4 17:27:23 2016 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@mailman.ysv.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by mailman.ysv.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D50A8B2C9CD for ; Wed, 4 May 2016 17:27:23 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from list1@gjunka.com) Received: from msa1.earth.yoonka.com (yoonka.com [185.24.122.233]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "msa1.earth.yoonka.com", Issuer "msa1.earth.yoonka.com" (not verified)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 63FF61E34 for ; Wed, 4 May 2016 17:27:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from list1@gjunka.com) Received: from crayon2.yoonka.com (crayon2.yoonka.com [192.168.1.20]) (authenticated bits=0) by msa1.earth.yoonka.com (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTPSA id u44HHH7b068854 (version=TLSv1.2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128 verify=NO) for ; Wed, 4 May 2016 17:17:17 GMT (envelope-from list1@gjunka.com) Subject: Re: old ports/packages To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org References: <03cc4012-026e-c007-09e1-ee45524f1b95@elischer.org> <1FAFDF989841D03604BB448B@atuin.in.mat.cc> <7b8d22c6-1fed-d517-9f89-693b88dfc358@freebsd.org> <20160504070341.GV740@mail0.byshenk.net> <3dfd6fea-da32-b922-65d1-f64b8e113112@toco-domains.de> From: Grzegorz Junka Message-ID: <6e340f95-6d10-4991-0cd6-95d336e2f044@gjunka.com> Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 17:17:17 +0000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <3dfd6fea-da32-b922-65d1-f64b8e113112@toco-domains.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.22 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 May 2016 17:27:23 -0000 >> What you cannot do is create old-style packages from a new ports >> tree. This is because the ports infrastructure has been changing >> since pkg_install was deprecated, and pkg_install simply will not >> work with the current ports tree (and, as I understand it, cannot >> practically be modified in order to work with it). > > You are mostly correct. It is possible to modify and old ports-tree to > get the new software in. I have at least two customer paying me for > exact this work. But to be fair: it is no fun and harder with every > new release :D > > I suppose what some customer need is an LTS version. Missing one is a > show stopper for FreeBSD usage in many firms i talked to. I do not > think this is a good idea from a technical point - but firms are slow > and want stability. > LTS of the base system or ports? The base system is already quite well supported long-term. In this particular case it's probably not ports per se but more the package manager? Because ports are not really FreeBSD's, they are separate applications, each one of which is supported as long as its author is willing to do so. Unless you mean the model adopted by some Linux companies, namely taking the ports tree, freezing applications at some specific versions, and only apply security and critical bug fixes to those applications? That would mean creating and maintaining sources for all applications listed in ports, rather than the ports tree itself! And that would be quite a task considering that many applications have multiple configurable compilation options. Not sure if it would be worth the effort if most companies only need a limited set of applications from the whole tree. On the other hand, if that was done then you would be left with no work :) Grzegorz