From owner-freebsd-ports Mon Mar 1 4:58:15 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from scotty.masternet.it (scotty.masternet.it [194.184.65.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 586F61535A for ; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 04:57:25 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gmarco@scotty.masternet.it) Received: from suzy (modem31.masternet.it [194.184.65.41]) by scotty.masternet.it (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id NAA27478; Mon, 1 Mar 1999 13:57:02 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from gmarco@scotty.masternet.it) Message-Id: <4.1.19990301131907.009936f0@194.184.65.4> X-Sender: gmarco@scotty.masternet.it X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 Date: Mon, 01 Mar 1999 14:05:47 +0100 To: ports@freebsd.org From: Gianmarco Giovannelli Subject: Too many open pr ? An idea... Cc: freebsd@scotty.masternet.it Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello to everyone. I want only to describe an idea I have to deal with the too many open pr (ports). I think that there are a lot of hackers/users/programmers that are trying to improve the availablity of software on FreeBSD. The ports are a good idea, but in my opinion suffer of some drawbacks. 1) If the port is not committed is unusefull; infact too many freebsd users don't read the gnats or the port mailing list, but rather try to find what they need in our ports tree. 2) If the port is old or older than the current version available on the net is unusefull too, and this is a nonsense if we have a port or un upgrade lying here and there waiting to be committed. Sometimes our distfiles are not fetchable anymore. It want NOT to be a critic towards any of the committers. I think and know they do all the best they can to improve our OS, but the time flows quickly for everyone, and perhaps some of them have also a real life to live. :-) So if the problem is the time I think a good thing is to try to lesser the load of the committer. And where is the main time waste a committer spend when trying to commit a port ? To correct the port file, to check the PLIST, to see if the {$PREFIX} are right. Well after reading a message dealing about all this process I have the idea from which this "madness" is born. Infact I thought that all this operations are not so difficult and a "trusted" users can do it easily. So this is my idea: What about to create a (some) groups of trusted users who have the task to filter the ports submitted and test them before the committer? If the port is wrong they contact the author and then until the problem is not fixed they don't give the ok to the committer. So the committer has not to deal about wrong things, because when he received the "checked port file" he knows it was analyzed by others persons. Surely he can try a "make install" to see if everything is ok, but if the "user-teams" have done a good job there will be nothing more to do than committing. I think the trusted user groups can also be divided in some areas of interests/knowledge like the port tree is : games, x11, sysutils and so on... Ok, this is a crazy idea, but I think it can have some benefits. 1) More people get involved in FreeBSD project, even if we don't do any "bazaar". If a person feels to partecipate in the project itself and knows he is make an usefull jobs is surely happier and is motivated to produce :-) 2) We can speed up the committing time and lesser the load on each committer. 3) We enlarge the test base on different hardware/software configuration. 3) We could have more ports :-). If I know my ports will be committed soon, I am motivated to send them and not to leave them in my HD. The succes of an OS don't depend only on how much reliable is (look the win family :-) but on how many applications can (run|be found) on it. Obviusly it has also some drawbacks . 1) We need to find a bunch of "voluntaries" trusted users, perhaps a coordinator. 2) We have to organize the thing better I have proposed :-) I think I have annoyed too much for this time :-) Thanks for attention. Any comment is welcome. Best Regards, Gianmarco Giovannelli , "Unix expert since yesterday" http://www.giovannelli.it/~gmarco http://www2.masternet.it To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message