From owner-freebsd-ports Mon Sep 18 3: 8: 9 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from ns1.sunesi.net (ns1.sunesi.net [196.15.192.194]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17BDC37B424 for ; Mon, 18 Sep 2000 03:08:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nbm by ns1.sunesi.net with local (Exim 3.03 #1) id 13axpq-000IYE-00; Mon, 18 Sep 2000 12:07:38 +0200 Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 12:07:38 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner To: Matthew Emmerton Cc: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Port Maintainers Message-ID: <20000918120737.A71258@mithrandr.moria.org> References: <002d01c0210a$beca4350$1200a8c0@zircon> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0.1i In-Reply-To: <002d01c0210a$beca4350$1200a8c0@zircon>; from matt@gsicomp.on.ca on Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 08:52:39PM -0400 Organization: Sunesi Clinical Systems X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE i386 X-URL: http://rucus.ru.ac.za/~nbm/ Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sun 2000-09-17 (20:52), Matthew Emmerton wrote: > For some time now I've seen many requests come to the ports mailing list > which really should be handled by the maintainers of individual ports, not > the people who look after committing PRs. This is a list for porters, and for people who wish to discuss ports, not only for ports committers. > As usual, the standard response is "contact the port maintainer". At > first I wondered whether it was simply inexperience or ignorance that > caused people to turn to the ports list for assistance, but over the > last few months, I'm beginning to think whether the problem lies on > the other side of the equation with the maintainers themselves. I may be creating policy, but I prefer: If you want to chat about whether something is wrong with a port, send mail to the ports list, and Cc the maintainer. If you want to update or fix a port, send in a PR, and then forward it to the maintainer. If the maintainer ignores it (I'm trying to get tkgnats to show me "left alone too long" ports, but it's not that simple), then send mail to ports again, and CC the gnats-submit address. If you get no response from the ports list, bother your favourite committers, in order, over it, until someone does something. Feel free to make me your favourite committer. I _love_ non-mailing list email! (: > What I'm wondering if is there is any mechanism in place to ensure that the > support channel (e-mail to the port maintainer) remains open and valid. I don't think there's an automated one. I'm not sure an automated one is a good idea - we all get enough automated email. > I know that at least one port for which the maintainer's email address > bounces mail. There may also be some ports for which the designated > maintainers simply don't maintain the port anymore. Report those sorts of things immediately to the ports list. We'd like to sort those issues out. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner Sunesi Clinical Systems nbm@mithrandr.moria.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message