Re: Stable tag will be slipped Sunday and release engineering will begin Monday

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve Rumble wrote:


> usage. In short, I see the different package systems as being
> a lot of unnecessary duplication of work.
>
> I think that it would behoove the BSDs to more tightly coordinate
> the package systems. Especially, I think that for a smaller and
> more progressive project like DragonFly, there are more important
> and interesting things to be doing than building another ports or
> pkgsrc replacement. I'm happy to see DFBSD not leaning that way.

The 'challenges' here manifold:

- Of close-on 12,000 ports (packaged or not) there are
probably fewer than fifty that "really, really, matter".

- *which fifty* varies by whom you ask, and even their needs
vary from one project, client, server or day of week to another.

- the vast majority of the source code is witten and maintained
by folks who are either inactive, sporadically active, not specifically
targeting the *BSDs, or any/all of the above.

Which leads to depending on a large and diverse number of
volunteers, each maintaining one or several ports in which they
have both an interest, and the necessary expertise.

All that has to happen before there is enough to work with to DO
a package tree.

And all of the *BSD's have to rely on that large and diverse
collection of volunteer port or package 'maintainers' to
also check that security is up to date - again concentrating
only on those in which they have both an interest and expertise.

If any of the *BSD's were to try to bring this whole area
'in from the cold' and put it under a formal process, they would
probably have to drop the number of supported items to
10% of the current 'body count'.

Improvements - by all means, but it falls into the category of:

'The difficult done immediately.  The impossible takes a little longer.'

Bill Hacker