From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 20 02:38:10 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 27F8416A4CE for ; Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:38:10 +0000 (GMT) Received: from lariat.org (lariat.net [65.122.236.2]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D06C43D41 for ; Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:38:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brett@lariat.org) Received: from anne-o1dpaayth1.lariat.org (IDENT:ppp1000.lariat.org@lariat.net [65.122.236.2]) by lariat.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA08773; Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:38:02 -0600 (MDT) X-message-flag: Warning! Use of Microsoft Outlook renders your system susceptible to Internet worms. Message-Id: <6.2.1.2.2.20050419203347.05bed918@localhost> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.1.2 Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:37:43 -0600 To: questions@freebsd.org From: Brett Glass In-Reply-To: <20050419043330.GA92736@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <200504180758.BAA10753@lariat.org> <20050419031952.GA90643@xor.obsecurity.org> <6.2.1.2.2.20050418213725.0591beb0@localhost> <20050419041638.GA56099@xor.obsecurity.org> <6.2.1.2.2.20050418222126.04ea4660@localhost> <20050419043330.GA92736@xor.obsecurity.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" cc: Kris Kennaway Subject: Re: Can't build ports on older FreeBSD machine X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 02:38:10 -0000 At 10:33 PM 4/18/2005, Kris Kennaway wrote: >OK, but I don't care about your HO on this matter. You may not, but users of FreeBSD do. At the very least, ports should be tagged as to the versions of the OS with which they will work, and it should be possible to retrieve the most recent version of the port that works with the version of the OS you are running. Having users update in the standard (and prescribed) way and finding out that a major function (the entire ports system) is no longer working is certainly not something one would expect from professionally crafted software. Note that under Linux, the maintainers of distributions do exactly this. However, FreeBSD is essentially its own "distro," so the job of doing this falls to the FreeBSD developers and the maintainers of the ports. If it is not done, FreeBSD users will enjoy an inferior experience to the one they get with Linux or even Windows. --Brett Glass