Dead projects in ports tree

[Beech Rintoul]

On Monday 02 March 2009 13:36:38 David E. Thiel wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 04:05:56PM -0800, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> > > multimedia/openquicktime - no movement in CVS / SVN for 1+ years; no
> > > releases in the past 3 years
> > >
> > >    I'll continue posting more items to this thread as I find them...
> > > Thanks,
> > > -Garrett
> >
> > xmms looks completely dead now. Can someone confirm or deny this fact?
>
> While I'm in favor of removing useless ports, there are several projects
> which are simply "done", and lack of development doesn't mean they're
> obsolete or useless. The logic above would seem to suggest we should
> remove qmail too. I would like to hear what people feel the best method
> for getting rid of unused and irrelevant ports, though -- bump
> portrevision and mark BROKEN for a few months?

This opens up a huge can of worms. One user's favorite port is another user's 
crap. The general rule of thumb is if the port is unmaintained and abandonware 
(website gone, not fetchable etc) then it should be marked DEPRECATED with a 
date a month or so out. Most of these ports are also mirrored by FreeBSD if 
they aren't restricted. Any port that has been broken for >6 months are 
usually removed. Portmgr usually handles this area and it's generally a good 
idea to contact them regarding any of these ports.

Beech
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