New port with maintainer ports@FreeBSD.org [was: Question about maintainers]

[Roman Neuhauser]

# linimon at lonesome.com / 2005-07-28 12:04:01 -0500:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 06:41:11PM +0200, Roman Neuhauser wrote:
> > The policy makers won, everybody else lost.
> 
> You're entitled to your opinion, but from the other side of the table
> it looks like this:
> 
> What Kris and I see are hundreds of ports that are committed and then
> either a) are never updated, b) wind up not compiling when the base
> system is updated, c) wind up with PRs filed against them by users, for
> other problems ("doesn't work with XYZ"), that no one will ever deal with.
> 
> In every case the users who install those ports aren't getting what they
> expect.
> 
> How does this situation serve the users?

    I am a member of the mythical "users" group, and I don't mind fixing
    whatever breakage I stumble upon as I go.
 
> Let me mention today's statistics:
> 
> Total number of ports: 13281
> Number of ports with no maintainer: 3670 (27.6%)
> 
> I just can't see how this is a good situation.

    Would it be better if there were 9611 ports instead? How about
    "maintained" ports where the maintainers don't take proper care of
    their ports?

    I just don't see how no "designated maintainer" makes a port worse
    than port "maintained" by someone who refutes quite a bit of PRs
    with "I don't know, I only use minor part of the software, and
    that's all I can keep running".
 
> I no longer have the statistics online but from the last time I went
> through this it is about twice more likely that an unmaintained port:
> 
>  - has PRs against it
>  - is broken
>  - is out-of-date
> 
> as versus the average maintained port.  (Of course, some maintainers
> are far more active than others.)
> 
> And yes, it's true that he and I do the majority of the cleanup work to
> flag and (if necessary) remove broken ports and so tend to be sensitive
> to the issue.  But the idea that we have is that it's better to have a
> working port than a useless port.
 
    FMPOV the situation is "mostly working" vs none.

> People need to decide what their vision of the Ports Collection is.
> Some folks seem to want every possible port included, whether or not
> it is up to date and working.  I have, in particular, been trying to
> push us towards the direction of only having ports that we are going
> to use and maintain in it, on the theory that anything else is at some
> point going to waste some user's time somewhere down the road.

    Again, I'm a user, and I rather spend 2 hours fixing a particular
    bug in an imperfect port than 8 hours creating it from scratch
    (and god knows how much time from then if I'm forced to maintain
    it).

    I've sent quite a few patches to various ports since I've started
    using FreeBSD, and my experience is that maintained ports
    (especially those "maintained" by certain @freebsd.org addresses)
    are more likely to have PRs hanging for a long time. The situation
    is a bit <irony>better</irony> with ports maintained by people
    without a @freebsd.org address, because committers usually don't
    bother waiting for approval.

-- 
How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb?
You don't know, man.  You don't KNOW.
Cause you weren't THERE.             http://bash.org/?255991