From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 28 17:04:03 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: ports@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5ED6916A41F; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:04:03 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: from mail.soaustin.net (mail.soaustin.net [207.200.4.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 023B643D48; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:04:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: by mail.soaustin.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id 99D8D29EE; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:04:01 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 12:04:01 -0500 To: Simon Barner , Paul Schmehl , ports@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway Message-ID: <20050728170401.GA9534@soaustin.net> References: <42E81050.7090305@cs.tu-berlin.de> <66A226C3557B48ED535E3FED@utd59514.utdallas.edu> <20050727230523.GB54954@isis.sigpipe.cz> <20050728154248.GA943@zi025.glhnet.mhn.de> <20050728164111.GA66015@isis.sigpipe.cz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050728164111.GA66015@isis.sigpipe.cz> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i From: linimon@lonesome.com (Mark Linimon) Cc: Subject: Re: New port with maintainer ports@FreeBSD.org [was: Question about maintainers] X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:04:03 -0000 On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 06:41:11PM +0200, Roman Neuhauser wrote: > The policy makers won, everybody else lost. You're entitled to your opinion, but from the other side of the table it looks like this: What Kris and I see are hundreds of ports that are committed and then either a) are never updated, b) wind up not compiling when the base system is updated, c) wind up with PRs filed against them by users, for other problems ("doesn't work with XYZ"), that no one will ever deal with. In every case the users who install those ports aren't getting what they expect. How does this situation serve the users? Let me mention today's statistics: Total number of ports: 13281 Number of ports with no maintainer: 3670 (27.6%) I just can't see how this is a good situation. I no longer have the statistics online but from the last time I went through this it is about twice more likely that an unmaintained port: - has PRs against it - is broken - is out-of-date as versus the average maintained port. (Of course, some maintainers are far more active than others.) And yes, it's true that he and I do the majority of the cleanup work to flag and (if necessary) remove broken ports and so tend to be sensitive to the issue. But the idea that we have is that it's better to have a working port than a useless port. People need to decide what their vision of the Ports Collection is. Some folks seem to want every possible port included, whether or not it is up to date and working. I have, in particular, been trying to push us towards the direction of only having ports that we are going to use and maintain in it, on the theory that anything else is at some point going to waste some user's time somewhere down the road. mcl