Q: Updating a port (math:asymptote)

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 19:14:48 +0300
Jarmo Hurri <jarmo.hurri at syk.fi> wrote:

> 
> Greetings.
> 
> I would like to switch from Linux to FreeBSD, but am puzzled by the
> timeliness of the ports. In particular, I use a drawing program called

	The extent to which any given port is kept up to date depends on
the maintainer.

> asymptote quite heavily in my work. From the ports page I noticed that
> the ports version is approximately 14 months old:
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=asymptote
> 
> I tried to contact the maintainer via email, but got no response.
> 
> What would be the correct procedure for trying to get that port updated?
> 
> 1. Somehow get in contact with the maintainer. How? (I tried.)

	A non-responding maintainer may be for any number of reasons
including having lost all interest, but sometimes they're just temporarily
unavailable (on holiday, busy with other things ...) and will get back to
it later.

> 2. Try to become a maintainer. How?

	Step one would be to try bringing the port up to date yourself,
sometimes it is as easy as editing the Makefile, changing the version and
running make makesum to update the checksums. Sometimes the patches need to
be adjusted in which case much depends on how much patching was needed in
the first place. In the case of asymptote it looks like the only patch is
adjusting the path to exampledir in Makefile.in which ought to be pretty
easy to handle.

	The porters handbook has a lot of useful information on what to do
when things get tricky.

	If you succeed in bringing the port up to date then your problem
is solved (you have an up to date version) and if you use send-pr to submit
the changes to bring it up to date then there's a good chance that you'll
solve the same problem for everyone else who may want it. 

> 3. Something else?

	Wait for someone else to do it.

	FreeBSD is a volunteer project and the best way to make it better
is to scratch your itches and contribute the result.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org>