poudriere, python ports, and flavors oh my?

[Adam Weinberger]

> On 3 Dec, 2017, at 6:31, Eric Masson <emss at free.fr> wrote:
> 
> Is ports/head becoming the alter ego of src/head (possible breakages or
> disruptive new features from time to time) ?

Categorically, yes, though major breakages are rare. Situations like this, where a major new feature gets introduced and the FreeBSD developers and community hunt down problems and solve them, is strictly the role of HEAD. While of course we can make no *guarantees* in either branch, ports-secteam works very hard to inspect everything that gets merged to quarterly.

> If yes, this should be written down in the handbook (chapter on ports
> still states ports/head for svn retrieval) and quarterly ports branches
> should be publicized.

I had no idea that the handbook was still directing people straight to HEAD. You're absolutely right, that should be changed. Unfortunately, directing people to an SVN path is difficult, because the SVN URL changes every 3 months, and switching an SVN branch from one path to another isn't completely trivial.

For binary package users, new installs always default to installing packages from quarterly, but we could do more to urge port builders toward quarterly branches too.

# Adam


-- 
Adam Weinberger
adamw at adamw.org
https://www.adamw.org