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

[Grzegorz Junka]

>> Are there any advantages of using pkg instead of pkgsrc on FreeBSD?
>> Instead of having branches by OS version, would having ports LTS branches
>> independent of the base system be a better solution?
>> Grzegorz
> It looks like you might have misunderstood something I said about pkgsrc.
>
> I use pkg with FreeBSD ports on FreeBSD, but my interest in pkgsrc and pkgsrc-synth is for NetBSD.
>
> Working with pkgsrc on NetBSD convinces me that they need to import portupgrade and/or portmaster from FreeBSD, maybe synth will be better?
>
> Pkgsrc is awkward dealing with packages whose names have changes or branched.
>
> Ports LTS branches, is that Long Term Service?  I don't really understand that question.
>
> Tom
>

First question: Sorry, I used a mental shortcut without explaining. I 
imagined that because both pkg and pkgsrc support FreeBSD, the effort of 
maintaining both could be combined, and pkgsrc seemed to be superior 
since it also supports other OSes. I also assumed that that has been 
considered before. So, because pkg hasn't been replaced by pkgsrc, there 
must be some advantages of using pkg on FreeBSD as opposed to using 
pkgsrc. My question was about these.

LTS indeed is Long Term Support. In short, there is a branch (or 
branches) not tied to any specific OS release but can be dependent on a 
specific OS release (e.g. 11.0 as minimum) in which application versions 
don't change as often as in the current branch. It would mostly 
incorporate security fixes. Now, a question if the versions shouldn't 
change for the duration of the LTS branch or if small version changes 
are allowed is a secondary issue. What I am trying to determine if 
having that branch/es would fulfil the requirement of many people on 
this list of having a more stable ports tree (where branches by OS 
versions was one of the proposed solutions).

Grzegorz