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

[demelier.david at gmail.com]

On Fri, 2017-06-23 at 10:38 +0200, Vlad K. wrote:
> But again, that's all doable without having to introduce new 
> infrastructure. The ports tree as is can be maintained like this and 
> quarterly repos would NOT be required. All it's needed is for 
> maintainers to keep a stable version and a latest version. There's 
> already plenty of ports done like that, otoh postfix and 
> postfix-current, nginx and nginx-devel, etc...

Yes but again if not all ports follow this system, we still have the
problem of having potential major upgrades.

> Because the BIGGEST problem in maintaining separate "stable" or LTS 
> branches is BACKPORTING fixes for ports in the #2 category, ie.
> those 
> that mix new features with fixes, so you have to CHERRY PICK only
> the 
> fix and BACKPORT it to your "stable" branch. And that's even more
> work 
> often introducing NEW bugs.

Release branches do not need backports.

> BTW, the problem of the original post could've been avoided if the
> user 
> only read UPDATING which clearly stated that www/node becomes 7 and 
> previous node (6) becomes www/node6.  (20161207) entry.

Completely off topic, if you upgrade the ports tree, you should update
all your packages as doing partial upgrades is even worse (shared
library rebuilds for instance).