From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Nov 11 14:54:16 2003 Return-Path: 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 CD88416A4D0 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:54:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from mx2.fillmore-labs.com (lima.fillmore-labs.com [62.138.193.83]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 06F3743FE9 for ; Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:54:15 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from eikemeier@fillmore-labs.com) Received: from pd951a4b5.dip.t-dialin.net ([217.81.164.181] helo=fillmore-labs.com ident=2th7sfer8ngbi8er) by mx2.fillmore-labs.com with asmtp (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.24; FreeBSD 4.9) id 1AJhOn-000EHz-0m; Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:54:13 +0100 Message-ID: <3FB16893.2030200@fillmore-labs.com> Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:54:11 +0100 From: Oliver Eikemeier MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Charles Swiger References: <1068458390.38101.19.camel@dirk.no.domain> <20031110152000.622db381.lehmann@ans-netz.de> <1068471598.38101.77.camel@dirk.no.domain> <20031110163623.GC93583@procyon.firepipe.net> <1068495958.690.72.camel@leguin> <53EC784E-13C5-11D8-AD24-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <3FB00E53.8060603@fillmore-labs.com> <20031111021929.GA17050@xor.obsecurity.org> <73E9F604-1472-11D8-BD31-003065ABFD92@mac.com> <20031111183540.GA26599@xor.obsecurity.org> <3FB13AA5.7090209@fillmore-labs.com> <2E850FE8-1494-11D8-BD31-003065ABFD92@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <2E850FE8-1494-11D8-BD31-003065ABFD92@mac.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Authenticated-Sender: eikemeier@fillmore-labs.com User-Agent: KMail/1.5.9 Organization: Fillmore Labs GmbH X-Complaints-To: abuse@fillmore-labs.com cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ability for maintainers to update own ports X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 22:54:16 -0000 Charles Swiger wrote: > On Nov 11, 2003, at 2:38 PM, Oliver Eikemeier wrote: > >> Kris Kennaway wrote: >> >>> More broadly speaking, there doesn't seem to be significant interest >>> from the community to provide support for old releases. If there was, >>> it's something that could be provided by a group of interested members >>> of this list. >> >> sysutils/pkg_install is a[n] attempt to supports older releases. In a >> production environment it is not always possible to upgrade the base >> system at will. I'll try my best not to break backwards compatibility >> without a good reason. > > Good for you, Oliver. I don't think you're the only person with that > sentiment; a significant number of ports reference OSVERSION in order to > behave correctly on older versions of the OS: > > % find /usr/ports -name Makefile -exec grep -l OSVERSION {} \; | wc -l > 585 Or to differentiate between -STABLE and -CURRENT? [...] > Apache-1.3.29, Python-2.3.2, and a lot of other useful software will > build and install on versions of FreeBSD prior to 4.7 without using > ports. The intent of the ports system is to help users run software on > their machine, not to require users to upgrade to the latest version of > the OS in order to update such ports. I expect very few ports to fail on older systems (if they are not too old). The problem for most maintainers here is testing (and debugging). I don't support older systems in that sense, I can only try to fix problems that are reported. No QA team to test the port on 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9 here... But AFAIK Apple is deprecating old Mac OS X versions quite fast now, faster that they did with Mac OS 9, so that doesn't seem to be so uncommon even on commerical *BSD platforms?