From owner-freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 24 23:30:39 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: announce@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D87B16A422 for ; Wed, 24 May 2006 23:30:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B95DD43D45 for ; Wed, 24 May 2006 23:30:38 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from obsecurity.dyndns.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 991821A4D86 for ; Wed, 24 May 2006 16:30:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: by obsecurity.dyndns.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 575635178B; Wed, 24 May 2006 19:30:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 19:30:37 -0400 From: Kris Kennaway To: announce@FreeBSD.org Message-ID: <20060524233036.GA91627@xor.obsecurity.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="fdj2RfSjLxBAspz7" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 24 May 2006 23:46:04 +0000 Cc: Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] Volunteers needed to help maintain ports X-BeenThere: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Project Announcements \[moderated\]" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 23:30:39 -0000 --fdj2RfSjLxBAspz7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Many of you no doubt make use of the FreeBSD Ports Collection for installing and managing third-party software. What you may not know is that a lot of the ports in the Ports Collection have no assigned maintainer. Unmaintained ports tend to lag behind the rest of the Ports Collection in the speed of updates to new versions, and in the overall quality of the port. With nearly 15000 third-party applications in the Ports Collection, and dozens more added every week, there is an ever-present need for more volunteers to assist in maintaining ports. What is a Port Maintainer? A Port Maintainer is a FreeBSD volunteer who donates some of their time to making sure a port is kept up-to-date and in good working order. They are intermediaries between the FreeBSD user community and the third party developers of the software, and they help to ensure that the software runs optimally on FreeBSD systems. Maintaining a port or two is a great way to contribute to the FreeBSD project! Maintaining a port does require some familiarity with the Ports Collection and the workings of the software (at least at an operational level), but we have an excellent collection of documentation (the Porter's Handbook) that explains how to get started, and covers many of the more advanced points you may need to know. And of course the ports community is available to answer your specific questions, via the ports@FreeBSD.org mailing list. The following document explains in more detail about what it means to be a Port Maintainer: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributing-ports/index.html and the Porter's Handbook may be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/index.html (translated versions are also available on the FreeBSD website). The following command may be used to list the ports that you have installed on your system that are currently unmaintained. First make sure your INDEX file is up-to-date: # cd /usr/ports # make fetchindex Then run the following command (root privilege is not necessary): % sh -c 'cd /usr/ports; grep -F "`for o in \`pkg_info -qao\` ; \ do echo "|/usr/ports/${o}|" ; done`" `make -V INDEXFILE` | \ grep -i \|ports@freebsd.org\| | cut -f 2 -d \| ' This will display a list of all ports that are unmaintained; you can then investigate each of the listed ports to see if you may be interested in maintaining one or more of them. You might be surprised to learn that a software package you use and rely upon every day has no port maintainer! The "contibuting-ports" document referenced above explains what to do next. Thanks in advance, Kris --fdj2RfSjLxBAspz7 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFEdOycWry0BWjoQKURAlzVAKDdQUrZLslYCJ9Pkn1Lu5Z8toRK8gCfSKgk 6enuZCyS0CMcdnDh/Cc3fzE= =B2nR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --fdj2RfSjLxBAspz7--