Is pkg quarterly really needed?

[Mark Linimon]

I understand that having the quarterlies is not meeting your use case.
You've said that.  We get it.

So you want some kind of running -quarterly branch.

But where are the N hours of work per week to QA all the patches to
the -quarterly branch, or a -stable branch, or whatever people seem
to demand, to come from?

This is a serious -- if very irritated -- request.

We've moved from a "we don't have enough person-power to manage a ports
branch" to "we kinda have enough person-power to manage both head and a
kinda-branch."  OK.  That isn't meeting all the use cases.  Understood.

Are you going to volunteer for a team to run that QA?  Who else do you
think should be on it?  Clearly the current volunteers don't have the
bandwidth.  It is hard enough just to kep ports-head building.  Where
do the hours come from?

You're comparing your expectations of the output of what a professional
QA team would do, to the work that N volunteers do.  Obviously the results
are not comparable.  It's crazy to think that they would be.

Honestly without some volunteers to do the _hard_, _unrewarding_, work
to QA the ports tree, this is all either a) just talk, or b) people
wanting volunteers to provide professional-level support, for free.

tl;dr: provide some resources, or don't.  I am getting to the point where
I don't care either way.  All I see is the people who are doing actual work
get poked in the eye.

mcl