portmaster, portupgrade, etc

[Steve Kargl]

On Thu, Oct 05, 2017 at 09:31:41AM -0600, Adam Weinberger wrote:
> > On 5 Oct, 2017, at 9:25, Steve Kargl <sgk at troutmask.apl.washington.edu> wrote:
> > Which brings me back to my i686 laptop with limited resources.
> > If portmgr makes it impractical/impossible to easily install ports
> > without a sledge hammer, then testing possible future patches to 
> > libm will simply skip i686 class hardware.
> 
> I'm not clear what role you think portmgr has in this. Portmgr
> merely brings new features to the ports tree. Portmgr itself is
> responsible for no build tool other than "make install".
> 
> I don't know how many times I need to keep saying this, but
> portmgr is not killing off portmaster. There is simply nobody
> developing portmaster anymore, and that is not portmgr's
> responsibility. There ARE people developing poudriere, and
> that is why poudriere continues to work with new ports tree features.
> 

I suppose it's a matter of semantics.  If the Makefiles and *.mk
files under /usr/ports are altered to allow subpackages and
flavours to enhance pkg and poudriere, which will break portmaster
further, then yes portmgr has made a decision to endorse a sledge
hammer over simple tools.

Mere users of the ports collection are not privy to discussions
on a portmgr alias/mailinglist.  A quick scan of the members of 
portmgr and contributors to poudriere show at least 4 common
members.  There are 8 people listed under portmgr.  When decisions
were being made on the introduction of subpackages/flavours into
the ports collection, did the 4 common members recluse themselves
from any formal or informal vote?  If no, then there is certainly
a conflict-of-interest in what is best for the ports collection
versus what is best for poudriere.

Yes, portmaster is currently unmaintained.  Doug Barton left
FreeBSD developement because he was continually brow beaten
whenever he pointed out what he felt were (serious) flaws in
FreeBSD and in the ports collection.

-- 
Steve