Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:54:49 +0200 From: Michal Varga <varga.michal@gmail.com> To: freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: How to handle upgrade of libnotify when cups-client-1.4.8 is marked as broken Message-ID: <1314564889.82067.89.camel@xenon> In-Reply-To: <20110828193046.GA668@magic.hamla.org> References: <4E5A48AC.6050201@eskk.nu> <20058.20743.791783.342355@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <BLU0-SMTP182102B9C96837517ECB6BB93150@phx.gbl> <20110828172651.GB277@magic.hamla.org> <20110828173059.GT17489@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua> <20110828181356.GD277@magic.hamla.org> <20110828183300.GX17489@deviant.kiev.zoral.com.ua> <20110828184542.GE277@magic.hamla.org> <20110828152234.54cc9fac@seibercom.net> <20110828193046.GA668@magic.hamla.org>
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On Sun, 2011-08-28 at 15:30 -0400, Sahil Tandon wrote: [...] > Criminal? Indifference? This sort of troll-ish hyperbole is decidedly > unhelpful. I do agree that a note in UPDATING is appropriate. [...] > Ah, more trolling. To contribute my random few cents to the debate (without actually contributing anything of worth, so you don't really have to read it): Replies like these already made me discard like 20 of my own emails in the past, mid-write, exactly because of this expected outcome - accusations of trolling, because, why not, that's really what it's all about, right. So to say for myself - I do not know Jerry, but I definitely share his sentiments and even find his tone quite funnily (is that a word?) appropriate, as the ports quality, over the last year, went totally, horribly, down the drain. On some of my desktop setups, I keep about 900-1000 installed ports (and there are some ~200-300 for servers in general). There already seems not to be a single week, even once, without some MAJOR breakage that always takes hours (sometimes days) to track down and fix by my own (yes, even stuff as simple as "hey, you should have known that you only need to disable TLS and everything is fine again, duh" might take hours when walking through 100s of steps upgrade process and ESPECIALLY when that one particular breakage is combined with another, unrelated one. How much I love those days). And I know that every time I'd start writing a mail about it, my tone would be exactly the same as Jerry chose. With the expected result of "Zomg stop trolling", or for a change, the ever popular megahit "Patches welcome" (yes, like that will help anyone now), without even bothering to read what I'm really trying to complain about. The fact is, that port breakages are already so LOVING common these days that some people (like me) now take them as a regular daily routine. And sooner or later, more of them will start cracking and going for the same tone as Jerry did. On a weekly basis, again and again, there are port updates being introduced with what seems to be absolutely no testing whatsoever, some breakages take multiple takes on fixing by their respective port maintainers, new versions of major dependencies get introduced only to be rolled back few days later; using ports especially for this last year feels like a rollercoaster ride without a seatbelt, upside down, inside a volcano, wearing a parachute. And none of this is PORTS issue itself. It's a quality control issue, or more like - the horrible lack of it. So, was really Jerry's tone so trollish? I don't really think so. I'd simply consider him angry, as for myself, I know how many such emails I personally didn't have nerves to send, and would really, really love to. But somehow I feel, Jerry's is simply a start and there is much more of this to see in the coming future... m. -- Michal Varga, Stonehenge (Gmail account)
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