From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 28 21:13:01 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 0C40816A41F for ; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:13:01 +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 BDAA143D49 for ; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 21:12:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: by mail.soaustin.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id 4484829E8; Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:12:59 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:12:59 -0500 To: Paul Schmehl Message-ID: <20050728211259.GB18923@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> <42E917BA.10406@exit.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i From: linimon@lonesome.com (Mark Linimon) Cc: ports@freebsd.org 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 21:13:01 -0000 On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 12:49:54PM -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote: > Can you imagine for a moment how intimidated I would have been had I had > to take on that additional challenge? I'm sympathetic to this (there are a _lot_ of things to know about how the Ports Collection works), but the transpose is that it still leaves the ports in a situation where no one is signed up to trying to fix them if/when they break. > Trying to solve compile problems is, for me, time consuming and confusing. It's not necessarily going to be any less time consuming for any other FreeBSD volunteer :-/ And there's the problem -- who's going to do the work going forwards? In FreeBSD, there is no mystical "they". It's just us, the volunteers. (AFAIK no one is paid to work on ports.) > If we adopted your suggestion, there would be no port for sguil, because > I never would have taken it on. I would have given up. And that means > there would also be no port for barnyard, and no port for sancp. > > Is that what you want? What we want is fewer broken ports. Everything else is derived from that. We want to encourage more people to contribute -- both in writing ports, sending PRs, and maintaining ports -- but we want to keep in mind this goal of having as many ports as possible, working. The alternative is to read Slashdot about how the FreeBSD Ports Collection is junk because nothing works right and submitted PRs are never worked on. (IMHO the poster is wrong, of course, but there's the perception -- and yes, this is in a current subthread.) mcl