[RFC] Why FreeBSD ports should have branches by OS version

[Dave Hayes]

On 06/22/2017 08:53, Julian Elischer wrote:
> Yeah but the quarterly branches are relatively useless because they a
> not sync'd to anything and mean nothing special to anyone.

They are not useless to me.

I maintain a fair number of different package repositories for various 
purposes. Over a long period of time I've found that trying to build 
from HEAD is a random crapshoot as to whether everything you want will 
build without you having to svn random ports back and forth through the 
revision tree (or patch them yourself), patch your build processes, 
and/or ask for help (which you often might not get).

In contrast, the quarterly branches (so far) have built everything I've 
wanted cleanly and this has been true for some years. No, the 
quarterlies are not perfect, but they seem to be closer to perfect than 
HEAD is.

Note that you have to handle the edge cases (recent security patches, 
revision mismatch, etc) anyway, HEAD or no. I find I have to handle less 
with the quarterlies because they do generally build cleanly.
-- 
Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - dave at jetcafe.org
 >>>> *The opinions expressed above are entirely my own* <<<<

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