Ports collection issue

[Lane]

On Thursday 26 October 2006 23:16, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> Lane wrote:
> > On Thursday 26 October 2006 19:07, Rik Davis wrote:
> >> Guys,
> >>
> >>   I'm a die hard freebsd user, but I am finding myself becomeing quite
> >> frustrated with why you completely pulled the 5.4 ports collection off
> >> of your ftp sites.
> >>
> >>   When I try to use my /stand/sysinstall now and attempt to connect to
> >> you ftp server, I ge the error that it cannot locate the 5.4-RELEASE
> >> packages. Why would you remove a collection that is still in such high
> >> demand by those of us that have yet to upgrade our binaries to a later
> >> version?
> >>
> >>   I depend on that being there, but this is not leaving a very pleasant
> >> taste in my mouth. Also, this is not the first time I have seen you do
> >> this. What am I supposed to do now that I no longer have access to those
> >> packages?
> >>
> >>   Sincerely,
> >>
> >>   Adrian Brooks
> >
> > Adrian,
> >
> > Use /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui and create a cvsupfile.  You can
> > then selectively install src-all, src-contrib, ports-all and any of the
> > various ports sub-trees that you need (but stick with ports-all).
> >
> > cvsup will get the proper Makefiles and whatnot for you.
> >
> > Email me if you need help setting that up.
> >
> > lane
>
> Adrian,
> 	Please note the fact that a lot of software distributors,
> regardless of whether you pay for the product or not, have a limited set
> of supported versions of their software for a reason.
> 	In this case FreeBSD did phase out their old versions of
> software for a reason, and that was supportability and space as Kris
> mentioned. So, please upgrade to the latest version of your major
> version fork (5.5 I believe).
> 	That is all.
> -Garrett

Just a note for clarification:

While the source and ports collection for 5.X may NOT be available using 
sysinstall, it should be recognized that sysinstall is really only reliable 
for initial installation of whatever is the current version (give or take a 
release or two).

cvsup and portupgrade are the preferred methods for maintaining the software.

Just for verification I have recently used cvsup to download the entire 
FreeBSD-3.4 system, including ports (That's right, 3.4).  While the ports may 
not be tied directly to the kernel version, they are there as well.

So, space considerations may be important to the maintainers, but I think they 
put a premium on continuity.  And being able to go backward three different 
versions is pretty darned cool!

lane