[RFC] Why FreeBSD ports should have branches by OS version

[Torsten Zuehlsdorff]

On 22.06.2017 21:26, Baho Utot wrote:
> On 6/22/2017 10:03 AM, scratch65535 at att.net wrote:
>> [Default] On Thu, 22 Jun 2017 14:18:56 +0200, Baptiste Daroussin
>> <bapt at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>>
>>> As usual with such proposal, where do you find the manpower to handle 
>>> the number
>>> of branches required (the quarterly branches are already hard to 
>>> maintain, it is
>>> only one branch).
>> Please help me out here, Baptiste, because I'm apparently missing
>> *something*.
>>
>> Out in industry, if you haven't enough people to do a new
>> high-quality release every N months, and you can't get a
>> headcount increase, then you cut the release schedule.  Can't do
>> 4 releases a year?  Cut back to 2.  Still too many?  Cut back to
>> 1.
>>
>> The alternatives to cutting the schedule are that (a) people
>> begin burning out and quitting, (b) quality drops and your
>> customer base begins abandoning you, or (c) both of the above.
>>
>> Why don't the same choices apply here?  What am I missing?
>> _______________________________________________
>>
> 
> 
> I am looking at OpenBSD to replace FreeBSD.  They have a more relaxed 
> update schedule and that fits with what I need.

Go ahead with whatever fits your needs.

But since the ports-tree is a subversion repository it is really easy to 
maintain the status you want. I do this for various customer and my 
various server.

> I am looking for a system that is very stable and doesn't do the upgrade 
> path for the sake of it being newer.

Which has various downsides. I remember for example various linux LTS 
distros, which only apply security fixes. I discovered various bugs 
which stay there for years, because they are not security issues - they 
just hurt you daily. :D

> Having a "releng ports" version that goes with a releng version of the 
> OS would be great by me.   Linux from scratch does this and it works 
> very well.  

It really does not work well. In everyday situation this results in 
"heck we need a new server to get a new version of a needed software, 
because we need a new linux version".
I regularly seeing admins setting up different Ubuntu versions, because 
at one you have PHP 7 and on the other MySQL 5.7, but not both at the 
same Ubuntu version.

Greetings,
Torsten