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

[Grzegorz Junka]

On 27/06/2017 17:45, Mark Linimon wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 09:24:31AM -0400, scratch65535 at att.net wrote:
>> The number of ports to build a server-of-all-work is not large.
> Now the problem is getting people to agree on exactly what that
> subset is.

I think this part is fairly easy. We can start with ports for which 
maintainers agree to provide security fixes to the stable branch or 
artificially limit the number and ask people to vote for their 
favourites. Another point for consideration is to firstly consider ports 
with smaller amount of dependencies so that there is less work in 
maintaining them.
> No one has ever done the work on "most minimal set of dependencies"
> in the ports tree -- and that's because it's hard work.  Add to that
> the fact that the technology has never supported partial checkouts
> and it complicates things.

Yes, but you need to start somewhere. Otherwise it will remain as 
occasional rant. Clearly starting with 26,000 isn't an option. Then 
starting with small number of ports and learning how to overcome these 
difficulties is best we can do.

> tl;dr: I do have long-time experience building subsets of the ports
> tree and in my experience it's harder than people think, once you
> get beyond a few dozen targets.
>

I think the hardest part is to agree on a set that is not too difficult 
to maintain but still useful so that people will try to actually install 
systems using them.

Grzegorz