Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 13:06:34 -0800 From: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org> To: SWIT <mark@s-wit.net> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: why are theynot updated WAS Re: samba 3.0, FreeBSD 5.1 Message-ID: <20031101210634.GA45077@rot13.obsecurity.org> In-Reply-To: <000c01c3a0b7$8eef69a0$0100000a@Biggie> References: <20031005080039.GA23414@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> <000c01c3a0b7$8eef69a0$0100000a@Biggie>
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--Kj7319i9nmIyA2yE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 03:34:30PM -0500, SWIT wrote: > newbie question. > why isn't the ports updated ? Seems alot of times the ports is outdated by a > version or more. > I mean if everyone is always saying its in the ports should they not be > better upkeeped ? 1) FreeBSD is a volunteer project, sometimes the volunteer maintainers don't have time to immediately drop their day job or whatever else they're doing and rush out a port update 5 minutes after the new version is released 2) Sometimes the maintainer is unaware of the update until someone tells him. 3) Some ports are unmaintained, which means they don't get updated unless someone submits one. 4) Sometimes the maintainer chooses not to update the port immediately, e.g. because it is a major update and they want to test its stability, or because it's known to have bugs, etc. Putting this together, if you find outdated software in the ports collection, send mail to the maintainer. Even better, develop a patch to update the port yourself (see the Porter's Hanbdook) and send that to the maintainer to make their job easier. For unmaintained ports (MAINTAINER=ports@FreeBSD.org) you should submit the update using send-pr(1). > Also why is such an old version of perl 5.003 still in the freebsd base when > 5.8 is out ? Because 5.8 is not backwards-compatible with 5.00503, and updating the base system version would break a lot of scripts used on installed FreeBSD machines. You can trivially install perl 5.8 from the ports collection if you want to use it. Kris --Kj7319i9nmIyA2yE Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQE/pCBZWry0BWjoQKURAhH6AJ443p1pIJ1YqADra7aKqzkh66qPRQCeIHff 33wlnciee9dCarUBd2b7RL4= =zs7K -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Kj7319i9nmIyA2yE--
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