"stable" ports?

[Garrett Cooper]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 3:57 PM, eculp <eculp at encontacto.net> wrote:
> Quoting Ivan Voras <ivoras at freebsd.org>:
>
>> Doug Hardie wrote:
>>>
>>> On 29 March 2010, at 08:57, Ivan Voras wrote:
>>>
>>>> In some cases the burdens are obvious - the maintainer(s) would need to
>>>> e.g. maintain three versions of the ports - a random example would be
>>>> e.g. X.Org 7.0 for 6.x, 7.2 for 7.x and 7.4 for 8.x. Another would be
>>>> keeping PHP 5.2 for 7.x and 8.x and having 5.3 in the future
>>>> (CURRENT/9.x) branch.
>>>
>>> I am a bit concerned about your concept of maintain, being able to build
>>> a port successfully, does not necessarily mean it will work properly.  For
>>> example, qpopper (which I maintain) has an issue where one feature does not
>>> work properly on 64 bit machines where it works fine on 32 bit machines.  In
>>> addition, there are a number of other machine types that are currently not
>>> heavily used but might become so in the future.  Thats a lot of different
>>> combinations of hardware and OSs to keep running for the maintainers.
>>
>> It was done (in Linux), hence it can be done. If all else fails and both
>> the project and the maintainer cannot find suitable build and test machines,
>> I'd suggest using ONLY_FOR_ARCHS, or doing the whole "stable" dance only for
>> Tier 1 platforms (enumerated in
>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/committers-guide/archs.html to be
>> i386, amd64, pc98). AFAIK from the ports POW, pc98 and i386 are too close to
>> be considered separately.
>>
>> Virtualization (VirtualBox) may help maintainers test on the architecture
>> they don't run natively.
>
> IIRC, pcbsd uses both ports and package system that I have assumed was
> similar to linux but I have never used it so I can't comment but it would
> seem practical to work together if there is common ground. Their site says:
> --
> The PBI Format
>
> Part of making a Desktop Operating System that people feel immediately
> comfortable with is ensuring that software installation is as easy and
> familiar as possible. PC-BSD has taken this approach when developing the PBI
> (Pc-Bsd Installer or Push-Button Installer) file format. Programs under
> PC-BSD are completely self-contained and self-installing, in a graphical
> format. A PBI file also ships with all the files and libraries necessary for
> the installed program to function, eliminating much of the hardship of
> dealing with broken dependencies and system incompatibilities. PBI files
> also provide developers and packagers with advanced scripting and user
> interaction in an entirely graphical format, making the entire install
> procedure similar to what a user would expect from other popular graphical
> operating systems.
> --
>
> I personally like the way the ports work and will probably not change to any
> type of packages but you never know.  I have never felt comfortable with the
> Linux packages.

    From what I've heard PBIs actually resemble OSX's dmgs more than
Linux packages as Linux doesn't package in `bundle' format (contain
all of the needed applications and libraries in one container).
HTH,
-Garrett