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Date:      Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:18:49 +0100
From:      Michael Gmelin <freebsd@grem.de>
To:        Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com>
Cc:        ports@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Newbie maintainer, question regarding patches
Message-ID:  <EBFDDF5D-6BE4-4BCF-BD0A-C297D3E6DCA2@grem.de>
In-Reply-To: <CAF6rxgmj7V85qrDBoK4ZbmShDLTW-yazUodEgq8KYA3jYYGhxQ@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <845ACEFD-830F-4941-9EE3-F3CB35FD6200@grem.de> <CAF6rxgmj7V85qrDBoK4ZbmShDLTW-yazUodEgq8KYA3jYYGhxQ@mail.gmail.com>

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On Feb 24, 2012, at 14:55, Eitan Adler wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 7:39 AM, Michael Gmelin <freebsd@grem.de> =
wrote:
>> b) I also have another massive patch which touches another 20 files =
which enables some new security features in ice (the history of this =
patch is that I developed it at first and submitted it to the vendor, =
who refined it and sent it back to me). I might want to make this patch =
optional as well (using a dialog style menu to enable it). In this case =
it also seems like it would be better not to split the patch up to all =
that many sources, but keep it as one feature that's contained in one =
patch.
>=20
> Just replying to this question: The ports tree is not meant for
> software development. I would much rather you try to get the patch
> into the upstream source than keep it as an optional patch in the
> ports tree.
In general I agree with your reasoning. The feature I'm talking about =
has been approved and will be in the next version (this happened almost =
half a year ago). Unfortunately Ice has a slow release cycle, as it is =
dual licensed (GPLv2+commercial). The next release of Ice is quite a =
while away and will probably a major release, as they only create =
releases that are also commercially supported. The vendor doesn't =
provide any source repository access or anything else that could be used =
to track new features or patches, they only get announced in the forums. =
So as a heavy user of this software package I would like to have access =
to these vendor approved and backwards compatible optional features =
without working outside of the ports tree. To a certain degree this is =
comparable to other ports that pull in optional features through patches =
(djbdns, qmail, nginx, php, etc.).

Alternatively an devel/ice-devel port could be created, that brings in =
more of these new features, but that would of course create more =
overhead - I could also host these feature patches outside of ports (as =
PATCHFILES) or create a forked project to track them, but all of this =
seems a little bit like over engineering, given the fact that the =
changes are fairly minimal (even though they're touching many files).

Michael

>=20
>=20
>=20
> --=20
> Eitan Adler




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