sysutils/cfs

[Chad Perrin]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2011 at 09:15:01PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
> On 09/07/2011 00:07, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
> > 
> > How is it impractical to, as a rule, set an expiration date based on
> > an anticipated future release date rather than only a month or two
> > out from when the decision is made? 
> 
> As has repeatedly been explained to you, you're asking the wrong
> question. The question is, how does it benefit the users to leave it in
> when we know that we're going to delete it? Either way the user will
> discover that the port is not easily available for installation when
> they update their ports tree.
> 
> The difference is that in the meantime people doing work on the ports
> tree don't have to work around the old port (that's going to be removed
> anyway). The point has repeatedly been made that with almost 23,000
> ports in the tree both innovation and maintenance become significantly
> more difficult. Keeping that burden as low as possible is a feature.

Perhaps I have not been paying enough attention, but this is the first
time I have seen this argument advanced clearly in this particular thread
of discussion.  I can fully understand the reasoning, now that it has
been explained.  (It might be obvious from this that I'm relatively new
to this list.)


> 
> I realize that what you're proposing sounds attractive from a purely
> theoretical standpoint. The problem is that it increases the
> maintenance burden a non-trivial amount without providing any
> substantive benefit.

I think it might provide some benefit to users that place a premium on
certain types of stability, but it probably doesn't approach offsetting
the additional investment of time and effort it would require.  Perhaps
something could be done with little or no additional effort to help ease
the process for those conservative users, probably involving some kind of
notification mechanism not currently in place -- or perhaps not.  I'm no
expert on the management of FreeBSD's ports system.

One thing I've seen come up that I definitely think would be a good idea,
though, is more accessible documentation of the CVS "attic", though.  I
had no idea such a thing existed for old FreeBSD ports until fairly
recently, and still don't know much about it.  I would think that the
porter's handbook, at least, should mention it (perhaps with a brief
explanation of why and how one might make use of it).

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 196 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/attachments/20110907/013949cc/attachment.pgp