Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2009 14:54:42 -0500 From: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> To: Alex Goncharov <alex-goncharov@comcast.net> Cc: trebestie@gmail.com, Doug Barton <dougb@FreeBSD.org>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org, carpetsmoker@rwxrwxrwx.net Subject: Re: status of FreeBSD ports you maintain as of 20090705 Message-ID: <20090804195441.GA2710@lonesome.com> In-Reply-To: <E1MYMMB-0005Zo-MJ@daland.home> References: <20090706014719.GG11993@lonesome.com> <070151759cb2aacd36a14eb4b318a435@xs4all.nl> <20090716181711.GC90253@comcast.net> <36957fedc04d840595162bb026a8ec62@xs4all.nl> <20090801114833.GA23826@lonesome.com> <83e5fb980908040459k2e533ab4o2d23b229f98b8ace@mail.gmail.com> <4A785310.6070109@FreeBSD.org> <E1MYMMB-0005Zo-MJ@daland.home>
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On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 11:55:19AM -0400, Alex Goncharov wrote: > Wouldn't it be better for everybody if more people could commit the > changes in their ports themselves? (Subject to a commit-privilege > revocation on a substantial breakage anyplace). IMHO: no. Too many people automatically update their ports on a regular basis, and rely on us to not introduce brokenness. Having updates filtered through people that have shown themselves to having had a good track record seems prudent to me. Those folks who submit a number of good-quality PRs over a period of months tend to get noticed and nominated as committers. In the past year, we have added 10 ports committers. On occasion we turn someone down for an insufficient track record but it's rare, and most often they reapply once they have established one. (For the record, we have 157 ports comitters, of whom 131 have been active in the last 3 months.) > How could I, for example, turn from a volunteer to a committer? Please see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing-ports/ for a good starting point. Its last section has cross-references to other sources of information. > Take also a look at the history of an attempt to volunteer elsewhere > in http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=136263. I understand your frustration, but the mysql ports are key ports that have been handled for a long time by their current maintainer. (He has 234 commits over the past 12 months, with only one maintainer-timeout during that time, which suggests to me that he's doing a good job.) I can see why a committer would be reluctant to commit that upgrade because of that. As for your other question: my own personal opinion is that we do have too many ports, but who decides when a port is "useful" enough? Other projects have a "process" to vote or otherwise decide on that. Several of our committers have voiced reluctance to add more "process" in the past, when the same subject has been brought up. Frankly, I wouldn't want to serve on the committee that decides :-) > Of course, the easiest is to dismiss the voices of discontent. Well, you have a right to your opinion ... I'm not saying that our process is perfect, far from it. (As an insider, especially as one of the people who wrangles the package-building machines, I have a front-row seat to many of our problems.) But IMHO it works better than it appears. mcl
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