Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 10:58:17 -0600 (CST) From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen@math.missouri.edu> To: "Aryeh M. Friedman" <aryeh.friedman@gmail.com> Cc: Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen@math.missouri.edu>, freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: duration of the ports freeze Message-ID: <20071201105443.K15697@cauchy.math.missouri.edu> In-Reply-To: <47518E1C.6090703@gmail.com> References: <33640.194.74.82.3.1196149681.squirrel@galain.elvandar.org> <20071201132508.GA33039@owl.midgard.homeip.net> <20071201135821.GK22121@graf.pompo.net> <200712010749.01173.david@vizion2000.net> <475180BF.6010302@gmail.com> <47518575.9040806@math.missouri.edu> <47518763.30509@gmail.com> <20071201102243.N15323@cauchy.math.missouri.edu> <47518E1C.6090703@gmail.com>
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On Sat, 1 Dec 2007, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote: >> >> >> On Sat, 1 Dec 2007, Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: >> >>> Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote: >>>> Aryeh M. Friedman wrote: >>>> >>>> For some reason, people contributing to this mailing list are >>>> getting frustrated because some of the applications are now >>>> getting to be about a month old. But why should we expect to >>>> have the latest and greatest in version number of application? >>>> It is because this is what we usually have, and so a periodic >>>> hiccup is out of the ordinary and so frustrates us. >>>> >>>> But suppose you are running Red Hat Linux instead. Do you also >>>> get the latest and greatest in this super timely manner? (To >>>> be honest this is not a rhetorical question, but my guess is >>>> "no.") >>>> >>>> In fact, who feels this frustration. Is it the ordinary user? >>>> Or is it us port maintainers who wish they could get their more >>>> recent PR's accepted? >>>> >>>> Surely this frustration is felt by us because we have >>>> information that things could be a little more up to date. But >>>> if we weren't in the know, then we wouldn't be so upset. >>> >>> I am not suggesting we do a major overhaul before ports are >>> unfrozen... what I am suggesting is there is always room for >>> improvement and the frustrations voiced should be looked as an >>> opportunity to improve it instead of us (the complainers) crying >>> in our milk. >> >> I feel that your deflection of the points I made was a little >> unfair. My question is - why exactly is there a frustration? Is it >> because the FreeBSD community have somehow set expectations to be >> "totally up to date" a little too high? Are we simply expecting >> more from FreeBSD than we get from Linux distributions or MS, >> simply because the average user has tremendous knowledge and >> insight into the internal development process? >> >> Remember, I'm just an average user, just like you. I have no >> special axe to grind in defending FreeBSD. >> > > Even though this is best answered in a more systematic way (an > "official" review of the entire problem set) here are my reasons for > being frustrated: > > 1. There as has been some work that I am aware on ports I use that has > not bean released during the freeze for various reasons (such as miro > and qemu patchs [enable the use of physical drives and run vista > without crashing]). None of them are pressing enough for me to > bypass the ports system because everytime you do so you complicate > upgrading (have fun keeping track of what you installed from ports and > what came from vendor tar's) > > 2. As a developer I have 3 ports I would like to release ;-) But this agrees with my original assertion - that the frustration is from the port maintainers and originators, rather than the port users. What solution would you propose. The only one I can think of is that we have a ports-stable and a ports-current. But I can see many people not liking this idea.
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