port maintainership of alpine?

[Kurt Jaeger]

Hi!

[maintaining mail/alpine]

> >> So I was thinking of becoming a port maintainer. Although I'm using
> >> FreeBSD for 15 years now, I have no programming experience at all.
> >
> > Do you have experience building software ? What is your background ?
> 
> Other than building ports, no. I don't have an IT background, but a 
> finance and legal background so that's not helping me here :-).

The finance-background should help you getting the details 8-)

How many ports did you already build yourself ? On which fbsd versions ?
Did you sometimes fix ports to get them to build ?

> >> So my first question is if it is possible for someone like me to become a
> >> maintainer for a port like alpine, or should I learn programming in C
> >> first?

> > Learning 'make' would probably more important to maintain the port.

> > Given that the latest alpine release was around 2008, it looks like
> > this software is not maintained even upstream! For this, you will
> > definitly need C skills.
> 
> The version in ports is old but alpine is still being developed and 
> currently at version 2.11.

Ah! Thanks for the pointer. Then you only need to get the 'make' stuff.

How much 'make' did you take up on the side ?

> > Given the deadline for non-staged ports, it looks like a tight race.
> 
> I know so that is why I'm interested.

I guess (very rough guess, I know) you need between 40 to 80 hours (!)
to dig deep enough to get it done. You need to learn make.

-- 
pi at opsec.eu            +49 171 3101372                         6 years to go !