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Date:      Sun, 6 Mar 2011 17:35:10 +0000
From:      "b. f." <bf1783@googlemail.com>
To:        Grzegorz Blach <magik@roorback.net>
Cc:        freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD needs fresh Blood!
Message-ID:  <AANLkTi=d5hP-WHPQVJYk9%2B7gXd-3d5j_wgypz7QM2A6X@mail.gmail.com>

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> I read last post Martin Wilke's blog called "FreeBSD needs fresh Blood!"
>
> First of all, I think it's difficult to testing ports.
>
> I'm using testing release of VirtualBox,
> but for build this port I must download patches,
> apply its on my own tree and merge its with official ports
> using portshaker.
>
> It's possible to build testing ports outside tree,
> but I must build every port separately, since `Make` don't known how to
> track dependencies.

There is always going to be some added work involved in testing.  Have
you considered using multiple trees, if you have sufficient disk
space? Or using a version control system?

>
> Another possibility is replace ports in disk, but after upgrade tree eg.
> with portsnap I lose my changes, and portmaster want to rebuild these
> ports to stable release.
>

It sounds like you are using the wrong tools. Although portsnap (which
is not best suited for this purpose) has path arguments and an -l flag
that can be used to add or preserve local changes, and both portmaster
and portupgrade have options to ignore certain ports or to substitute
alternative dependencies, you shouldn't have to make use of them.
Instead, you should probably be using CVS (or another version control
system that can import CVS), which will make merging and reverting
changes easier. And naturally you shouldn't run updating tools until
you've modified your tree.

> If testing will be simpler, I think more people will do this.
> Maybe we must create two trees, eg: ports-stable and ports-current
> First we publish changes to current tree and after week or two without
> pr, we publish updates to stable tree too.

This has often been proposed, but since it would require more work
from the already-overstretched committers, and the benefits are
questionable, I don't think it is likely to happen soon.

>
> Merging trees is another huge problem.
> Portshaker do this very well, but after merge I must rebuild INDEX file,
> which takes long time. This should be faster or even shouldn't be
> required (hard to do).

Do you really need to rebuild the INDEX?  You can often avoid using
it. If you do need to modify it, you can use some improved method,
like

http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/build_index.py

or modify it incrementally, with something like
ports-mgmt/p5-FreeBSD-Portindex,

http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/portindex-18_1.tgz

, or your own script.

b.



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