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

[Dave Hayes]

On 06/26/2017 00:27, Guido Falsi wrote:
> I only partly agree with what you say, but anyway insisting on the
> mailing lists with individual committers, and defending a general idea
> ignoring all the details, dismissing the actual problems in the detailed
> implementation that are raised by committers is not going to get much done.

I agree that empirical evidence would suggest this to be true.

> It has also been suggested here to write a full blown, planned and
> though out proposal to be submitted via the new "FreeBSD Community
> Process" [1], which could be much more effective.

Perhaps. I'm more of a 'get stuff done' kind of person than an RFC 
writer myself, but I'd like to see someone take a shot at it.

> I'd say the difficult part in such a problem is not in the idea but in
> the boring details of it's implementation and long term maintenance.

Actually I see the difficult part as how to solve the conflicting needs 
of this community. There appear to be two ideas: bleeding edge ports and 
stable ports. These are somewhat mutually exclusive and exacerbated by 
the need for security patches for the latter. I "solve" this problem by 
using quarterlies and running builds often, but it's not necessarily the 
best way.

I'd personally envision a "version" knob for ports, so you could 
explicitly specify the exact version of software you wanted to build; 
kind of like the options knobs are now. The work involved in making each 
value of that knob actually build is probably prohibitive, but it would 
allow various people to focus on the versions that matter to them. This 
would also limit discussions like these to specific support for specific 
ports, but those happen anyway so at least this particular
discussion would become moot.
-- 
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave at jetcafe.org
 >>>> *The opinions expressed above are entirely my own* <<<<

A generous person may not have wisdom. Unlike others,
this person has the means to gain wisdom.