From owner-freebsd-ports Wed Jan 8 16:20:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) id QAA12929 for ports-outgoing; Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:20:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.7]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id QAA12924 for ; Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:20:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU (wck-ca14-51.ix.netcom.com [207.92.174.115]) by dfw-ix7.ix.netcom.com (8.6.13/8.6.12) with ESMTP id QAA22404; Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:19:27 -0800 Received: (from asami@localhost) by silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU (8.8.4/8.6.9) id QAA02492; Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:19:23 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 8 Jan 1997 16:19:23 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <199701090019.QAA02492@silvia.HIP.Berkeley.EDU> To: imp@village.org CC: m230761@ingenieria.ingsala.unal.edu.co, ache@nagual.ru, ports@freebsd.org In-reply-to: (message from Warner Losh on Wed, 08 Jan 1997 11:06:17 -0700) Subject: Re: Niklas Hallqvist: archivers/hpack.non-usa.only From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi Asami) Sender: owner-ports@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk * That said, what is the goal of the ports system? To be beautiful on * all systems, or to have minimally invasive change to the software to * get it to be functional on FreeBSD? You can't have both, since the * former usually requires a boatload more work than the latter, and a * lot of machines to try something on, and a lot of patence in getting * things exactly right... There are three ways to go here: (1) Change the port in a way that is compatible with other operating systems (*) using BSD or __44bsd__ (see David O'Brien's mail), and send a patch to the author. Because of (*), the change is more likely to be accepted, and the patch can be deleted in the next release. (2) Protect all the changes with __FreeBSD__, and send a patch to the author. The patch is less likely to be accepted than (1) but at least it's not intrusive WRT other OS's so there is a chance to be accepted. When OpenBSD guys come along, we change some of them to __FreeBSD__ || __OpenBSD__. (3) Just change the ports to compile on FreeBSD. Don't send the changes back to the author. The port may or may not work with the next release. However, this port has a better chance to work on OpenBSD than (2). (4) Same as (1), but don't send back the patch to the author. See disclaimer on (3). The amount of work required by FreeBSD porters is (1) >> (2) > (3) > (4). For OpenBSD porters, it's (2) > (3) > (4) > (1). What does this mean? Not much, I don't think we can make a firm "policy" on this, these are just for people to keep in mind. One thing to note is that (2), if we you don't send the patch to the author, is a clear no-winner. Satoshi