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

[Kris Kennaway]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2005 at 12:49:54PM -0500, Paul Schmehl wrote:

> >I _certainly_ think that a port submitted with a maintainer of
> >'ports at freebsd.org' should hit the bit bucket immediately and never see
> >the light of day.  If it's important enough to submit, it should be
> >important enough to maintain.
> >
> While I sympathize with and agree with much of what you're written, let's 
> look at the practical application of your last paragraph.
> 
> I decided to create new ports for a program called sguil.  It's a network 
> security monitoring program that offers great potential for usefulness to 
> security professionals like myself.
> 
> I had never created a port before, so I was starting from scratch.  I 
> quickly learned that, for the port to even build, I had to have a port for 
> barnyard.  So I created one.  It took me while, but it's not part of the 
> tree.  I then discovered that, for the sguil port to work, I had to create 
> a port for sancp.  I did that too, and that's been accepted.
> 
> Now I've finally created ports for the sensor and server portions of 
> sguild, and I'm working on the client portion.  If FreeBSD adopts the 
> policy you suggest in your last paragraph, hat would me that I would *also* 
> have to take over maintainence for the following ports: tcl, itcl, tk and 
> iwidgets.

No, because you didn't submit those ports.

The rule is in place for *new ports* to make submitters take
responsibility that their new ports actually work, and so that when a
broken port is added to the tree, someone knows they are on the hook
to fix the problems that appear with it, whether they are submitted by
me, or other users of FreeBSD.

It is *very common* for new ports to not work as committed (for
various reasons that I can go into if you like), and it is often
necessary for a few rounds of fixes to be developed and committed
before all problems are resolved.

The rule became necessary after too many ports were committed in a
broken and unusable state, and the submitters and committers refused
to address the issues because they assumed that "someone else would
fix them".  That's pretty irresponsible, and such ports in the tree
waste my time and waste the time of other FreeBSD users, so this
behaviour is no longer allowed.

The bottom line is that if you care enough to submit a port for
FreeBSD, you need to care enough to make sure you submit a *working*
port to FreeBSD, and that means you list yourself as maintainer at
least for the first month or so until it is clear that there are no
outstanding problems with the port.  After then, you can drop
maintainership if you really don't want to continue to support the
FreeBSD community in this way.

Kris
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