Has the port collection become to large to handle.

[James Long]

> Date: Sat, 13 May 2006 14:28:49 -0400
> From: "fbsd" <fbsd at a1poweruser.com>
> Subject: Has the port collection become to large to handle.
> To: "freebsd-questions at FreeBSD. ORG" <freebsd-questions at FreeBSD.ORG>
> Cc: ports at freebsd.org
> 
> I for one think the port/package collection has already grown to
> large to handle in it's present state.
> Users are consuming massive bandwidth to download and it
> consumes a very large chunk of disk space. Saying nothing about
> the wasted resources consumed to back it up repeatedly.

What's your domain name again?

cvsup downloads only the bits of the port tree that have changed.
An intelligent backup strategy backs up the entire tree infrequently,
and the rest of the time, backs up only the files that have changed.

And since the ports tree is readily available off the net, why
back it up at all?

> This problem is caused by there being no mandatory requirement 

There is no mandatory requirement on anyone to do anything.

> So my question is how do we users make our needs known
> to the ports maintainer group so that will seriously address
> the problem of the packages being outdated?

I suggest you purchase one or more high-powered build machines and 
ship them prepaid to the ports maintainer.  Repeat every eight or ten 
months to ensure that the build machines remain state-of-the-art.