On 19.10.2026 at 22:07, Daniel Engberg wrote:
On 2026-10-19 21:56, Bernhard Froehlich wrote:I understand the frustration, unfortunately there are administrative/management issues regarding the ports tree affecting multiple areas including productivity and engagement which in turn also affects our ability to process PRs. On top of that most of us are volunteers with limited time, hardware etc.---- Am Mon, 19 Oct 2026 18:58:12 +0200 *[email protected] schrieb * ----A month ago, I decided to upload a new port after years of not doing so. It’s been open for 30 days and absolutely nothing has happened. That’s not really the problem, though—the port isn’t anything special. Just a small Perl wrapper for some mojo stuff. The problem is that when I look at Bugzilla, there are 590 ports waiting to be committed <https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=Open&limit=0&list_id=996712&order=changeddate%20DESC%2Cpriority%2Cbug_severity&product=Ports%20%26%20Packages&query_format=advanced>, some of which are 10 years old! It’s all very concerning—it doesn’t bode well for FreeBSD. Best regards, the last one to turn off the lights Simeó Reig Thanks a lot for your motivating words of wisdom! Anyway your statistics are wrong. That 590 tickets in bugzilla are not 590 ports to be committed but 590 bugs which are assigned and Open. Completely useless number. Overall we currently close around 350 Ports PRs per week but we have a backlog of around 2950 PRs. https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/page.cgi?id=dashboard.html Feel free to help or at least stop wasting time with useless stats.Best regards,Daniel
With LLVM and the abundance of freely available software, the Ports Tree can grow rapidly. However, this raises questions about how we balance software availability with long-term maintainability.
One issue worth reconsidering is the two-week maintainer timeout. For simple updates and minor fixes, the two-week timeout could be shortened, while more substantial changes would still receive adequate review.
We should also consider whether every piece of software needs to be included in the official tree. Some ports serve only a narrow audience or duplicate existing functionality, yet still require resources to build and maintain. Evaluating the broader usefulness of new ports could help keep the collection manageable and sustainable. I maintain a few ports locally, but I doubt they would be useful to a sufficiently broad audience to justify their inclusion in the official tree, especially given the resources required to build and maintain them.
The goal should not be to discourage contributions, but to ensure that the growth of the Ports Tree brings lasting value to the FreeBSD community.
Cheers -- Marek Zarychta
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