cvs commit: ports/sysutils/screenie Makefile pkg-descr

[Doug Barton]

On 9/28/2010 5:23 AM, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
> I am thinking that there might be users who do not really want to
> become maintainer of otherwise perfectly working port (for them).

That concern is understandable, but the problems come in down the road 
when something in the infrastructure changes, and there is no one to 
update the stale port. Not culling stale stuff is also how you get into 
situations like I cleaned up recently where you have ports that haven't 
even been fetchable for years still sitting around because no one pays 
attention to them.

> Hence my point of that we should probably deprecate ports that have
> some run-time/build problems, not just mere lack of development.

The model of "get rid of it unless someone is willing to maintain it" 
has worked well for the 15 years I've been involved with FreeBSD. It's 
also the best chance we have of perhaps inciting interest in someone who 
would otherwise never consider becoming a port maintainer.

At over 22,000 ports we have to seriously start looking at things in 
terms of "reasons to delete stale stuff" instead of "reasons to keep 
things around at all costs." The current system isn't even manageable, 
it's only going to get worse if we don't remove things when it's 
perfectly reasonable to do so.


Doug

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