[SUGGEST] Reform eclipse and eclipse related ports

[Mark Linimon]

On Sat, Oct 22, 2005 at 01:59:50AM +0200, Roman Neuhauser wrote:
> The build cluster automation shouldn't limit the utility of ports.
> BTW, are the scripts publicly available? I don't see anything on
> http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/ or
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/
> If I wanted to update the build cluster code, where would I get it?

If you don't understand the extent of that code, I can see how easy it
might be for you to assume that it's easy to work with.

Please see ports/Tools/portbuild.  Also you will be rewriting the
marcusom tinderbox at tinderbox.marcuscom.com as well.  I do not know
under what license the FreshPorts code is.

> portsmon is your software, and keeping it hostage to changes in
> ports is IMO unethical.

What I am _implying_ is that a lot of work has to be done to make it
work, and that I _personally_ am not going to make it a priority to
rewrite it based on someone's pet blue-sky idea.

The fact that you would charge someone like me who has put literally
HUNDREDS of hours into that system -- for his own personal internal
movtivation, there are no extrinsic rewards -- with being unethical is
a complete and total outrage.  As far as I am concerned this gives me
complete permission to just ignore anything you have to say after this
point.  You have apparently missed a key underlying principle of this
project: that it's a _volunteer_ project and you cannot _compel_ a
volunteer to go work on anything that they are not personally interested
in working on.

If you don't like this, the code is available under BSDL.  Grab a
copy, install it yourself, rewrite it, run it, and claim your solution
obsoletes mine.  That's the "BSD way".  But if you insist that I do all
that just on your whim, you're going to be out of luck.  (And, along the
way, you might find out how much work is already going into maintaining
it -- work, like much of what goes into the ports collection, that goes
on, unheralded, behind the scenes -- unlike all the bikeshedding like
this that goes on in public and what people seem so impressed by,
despite the fact that, in general, nothing actually gets accomplished).

I simply don't have the free time to rewrite it _and_ work on all the
other priorities to which I have currently, and in the past, put so much
time into on this project -- ones, as far as I am concerned, will have
a much higher impact on the usability of the system.

Before you get all the above done, I might even be able to _prototype_
some kind of better search mechanism and solve the more useful part of
the problem.  To me, it would clearly take far less time to do so.

However, as far as I'm concerned, you've destroyed your own credibility
with what I've quoted above, so I'm simply going to go back to _doing_
work rather than arguing with you, which is clearly going to accomplish
exactly nothing.  It's not even worth my time to ask for an apology for
it, either, although in my own mind I'm due one.  I just have better
things to do.

mcl