Quoting Ivan Voras <[email protected]>:
Doug Hardie wrote:
On 29 March 2010, at 08:57, Ivan Voras wrote:
In some cases the burdens are obvious - the maintainer(s) would need to
e.g. maintain three versions of the ports - a random example would be
e.g. X.Org 7.0 for 6.x, 7.2 for 7.x and 7.4 for 8.x. Another would be
keeping PHP 5.2 for 7.x and 8.x and having 5.3 in the future
(CURRENT/9.x) branch.
I am a bit concerned about your concept of maintain, being able to
build a port successfully, does not necessarily mean it will work
properly. For example, qpopper (which I maintain) has an issue
where one feature does not work properly on 64 bit machines where
it works fine on 32 bit machines. In addition, there are a number
of other machine types that are currently not heavily used but
might become so in the future. Thats a lot of different
combinations of hardware and OSs to keep running for the maintainers.
It was done (in Linux), hence it can be done. If all else fails and
both the project and the maintainer cannot find suitable build and
test machines, I'd suggest using ONLY_FOR_ARCHS, or doing the whole
"stable" dance only for Tier 1 platforms (enumerated in
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/committers-guide/archs.html
to be i386, amd64, pc98). AFAIK from the ports POW, pc98 and i386
are too close to be considered separately.
Virtualization (VirtualBox) may help maintainers test on the
architecture they don't run natively.
IIRC, pcbsd uses both ports and package system that I have assumed was
similar to linux but I have never used it so I can't comment but it
would seem practical to work together if there is common ground. Their
site says:
--
The PBI Format
Part of making a Desktop Operating System that people feel immediately
comfortable with is ensuring that software installation is as easy and
familiar as possible. PC-BSD has taken this approach when developing
the PBI (Pc-Bsd Installer or Push-Button Installer) file format.
Programs under PC-BSD are completely self-contained and
self-installing, in a graphical format. A PBI file also ships with all
the files and libraries necessary for the installed program to
function, eliminating much of the hardship of dealing with broken
dependencies and system incompatibilities. PBI files also provide
developers and packagers with advanced scripting and user interaction
in an entirely graphical format, making the entire install procedure
similar to what a user would expect from other popular graphical
operating systems.
--
I personally like the way the ports work and will probably not change
to any type of packages but you never know. I have never felt
comfortable with the Linux packages.
Have a great day,
ed
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