EOS/EOL policies of ports and ports intrastructure on RELENG_4

[Erwin Lansing]

While still many people use RELENG_4, it is EOD. Portmgr has set the
following policies with regard to EOL/EOS of this branch and kindly asks
developers to implement these:

- We keep building 4.11 packages as long as we have the resources.
  4.x package builds will be deprioritised though, meaning they may not
  be rebuilt as frequently.
- We will continue to support the 4.X infrastructure until RELENG_4
  EOL (1/31/2007) by building the INDEX on RELENG_4 for
  use by 'make fetchindex', and making sure that the ports collection
  infrastructure (bsd.port.mk, etc) continues to function on RELENG_4,
  subject to the reduced testing that this branch will receive.  This
  means that problems may be noticed only after the fact and may require
  community support to develop and test fixes.
- We do not require committers/maintainers to support 4.x, but ports
  will still be required to be marked BROKEN/IGNORE if they do not
  build/run.
- Port maintainers are strongly encouraged to accept patches from the
  community that allow their ports to build and run on 4.x.  However,
  since running on 4.x is no longer a requirement, maintainers may use
  their discretion in cases where a proposed patch would be disruptive
  to other supported FreeBSD branches, or would unreasonably impede
  ongoing maintenance of the port.
- We will continue to accept patches for ports collection infrastructure
  (bsd.port.mk, etc)
- We encourage all users and developers to migrate to the FreeBSD 6.x
  branch, which is a stable and mature platform, and is now the
  'reference' FreeBSD branch for the ports collection.

On behalf of portmgr,
-erwin

-- 
Erwin Lansing                                     http://droso.org
Security is like an onion.          (o_ _o)
It's made up of several layers   \\\_\   /_///    erwin at FreeBSD.org
And it makes you cry.            <____) (____>    erwin at aauug.dk
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