Ports support for RELENG_4 (Was: Re: Question about ports builds)

[Mark Linimon]

On Thu, Jul 06, 2006 at 09:55:47PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> I think you're right about that, and my preferred method of operation for
> the ports that I maintain has been to try and test on RELENG_4 whenever
> possible, but not let not testing stop me from updating a port that works on
> 7-current and 6-stable.

That's exactly what we are currently asking of the maintainers, yes.

> What I've found is that in those rare cases where there is an intersection
> between a port that is broken on RELENG_4 and users that care about that,
> I'm notified fairly promptly. If not by users, I usually get a krismail to
> the same effect. :)

Right.  At the moment I'm the standin for krismail, but the large number
of failures on i386-4 has given me a little pause.  I have asked a few
maintainers for their opinion on what may be some common problems.  I am
actively working on this issue right now.  I hesitate to send the krismails
for i386-4 until I understand a little more what's going on (and possibly
rerun it if we fix some things.)

I have already done krismails about *-6 over the last 2 weeks.

> All that said, I'd love to officially drop support for RELENG_4, but I think
> that until we drop support for RELENG_4 in the base, dropping support for
> the ports would break faith with our users. At the same time, I think that
> some bit rot at the edges (of the seldom-used ports) is natural, and not to
> be mourned.

We've already kind of said that on the portmgr policies page :-)  We're
also going to try to keep bsd.*.mk working on RELENG_4 at least as long
as the secteam support for the branch.

Note, however, that that deadline is also upcoming: January 31, 2007,
according to http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html#adv.

mcl