Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 12:16:58 +0900 From: Joel <rees@ddcom.co.jp> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Can't build ports on older FreeBSD machine Message-ID: <20050420120120.9D06.REES@ddcom.co.jp> In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.2.20050419203347.05bed918@localhost> References: <20050419043330.GA92736@xor.obsecurity.org> <6.2.1.2.2.20050419203347.05bed918@localhost>
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> >OK, but I don't care about your HO on this matter. > > You may not, but users of FreeBSD do. mmm . . . > At the very least, > ports should be tagged as to the versions of the OS > with which they will work, and it should be possible > to retrieve the most recent version of the port that > works with the version of the OS you are running. It sounds like a wonderful idea. Who's going to pay for it? > Having users update in the standard (and prescribed) > way and finding out that a major function (the entire > ports system) is no longer working is certainly not > something one would expect from professionally crafted > software. Oh? Well, okay, MSWxp sp2 is not what I would call professionally crafted software. You do realize how they got their list of what is known to work and what is known not to work, don't you? > Note that under Linux, the maintainers of distributions > do exactly this. Oh? Well, yeah, some do. Some don't. Depends on interest level and, in some cases, whether RH has the budget. > However, FreeBSD is essentially its own > "distro," so the job of doing this falls to the FreeBSD > developers and the maintainers of the ports. If it is > not done, FreeBSD users will enjoy an inferior experience > to the one they get with Linux or even Windows. I'm not going to lie. If it were possible to fund each of the BSDs enough to maintain professional backporting services for every release, I'll admit it would sure be nice. But I'm not sure I want to pay for it. I'll make you a deal. You pay me a hundred bucks an hour to backport your favorite apps and I'll do it. Just be aware that I'll be learning as I go (takes a lot of time!), and I'm the kind of guy who'll then just put the backport up for anyone to download, too. I think you'll discover it will most likely be cheaper for you to pay yourself to upgrade your OS and bring your apps and data up. That approach has some additional advantages, in that it helps you organize and put realistic values on your data and apps. Then, for instance, if you end up paying someone a thousand bucks to bring an abandoned app up on the new OS, or even to backport, or if you spent a week doing it yourself, you know why. -- Joel Rees <rees@ddcom.co.jp> digitcom, inc. $B3t<02q<R%G%8%3%`(B Kobe, Japan +81-78-672-8800 ** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp>; **
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