release cycle

[Mark Linimon]

On Sat, Jun 02, 2007 at 08:45:26AM +0100, Chris wrote:
> Given that Kris repeatedly tells me and others that the ports system
> is only supported on the latest freebsd release (meaning one has to be
> upgrading freebsd on their servers every few months to get this
> support) if 7.0 and 6.3 are released around the same time will the
> ports tree be supported on both?

Yes.

As for changing the release schedules, the ports team can only advise
the src team.  If you want completely decoupled releases, please find
about 6 people who will agree to work on nothing but doing the continuing
engineering to keep a branched ports tree working, and let me know.  (This
estimate is from the pkgsrc guys.)

"Support", btw, has an overloaded meaning here.  The meaning that kris is
using is "create packages and make sure everthing works".  The meaning
that you are using is probably "ports will work on that branch".  The
only time we've forcibly shown a branch the door was 4.11 recently, and
that was because the support burden had become too high.

If maintainers and committers want to keep their ports working on 6.0,
6.1, 6.2, 5.4, 5.5, and -current, then they're welcome to do so.  Any
release older than that and IMHO they're wasting their time (in particular,
there is too much src drift and instability pre-5.4.).

Having said that, early values of 7000xx probably have too many src
changes to expect much from them, either -- but then again, that's what
they're there for.

mcl