"Being a port maintainer" document

[Sam Lawrance]

Kris Kennaway wrote:

>At the moment, too many of our ports have no maintainer.  This means
>that there's no-one available to fix problems that occur with the
>ports or to deal with user support questions.  In some cases this is
>probably because no-one actually uses the software in question any
>more, but in other cases it's probably just because no-one in the user
>community has come forward to take over.
>
>I'd like to put out a general call for people to volunteer to maintain
>our unmaintained ports -- this is a great way for users to "give
>something back" to FreeBSD and help out the project -- but we need
>some form of document we can show them that lists the rights and
>responsibilities of port maintainers, so they have an idea of what's
>expected from them.  The porters' handbook does a good job of
>describing the details of constructing a port, but not the
>higher-level aspects of being a port maintainer.
>
>e.g.
>
>* Updating the port when a new version is released
>
>* Pushing local changes back upstream to the original authors
>
>* Fixing port errors reported by the package build cluster
>
>* Dealing with user support requests, at least by pointing them to the
>upstream developers for cases where it's not clearly a FreeBSD
>port-specific problem.
>
>* Evaluating PRs submitted against the port
>
>* Responding to change requests in a timely manner (2 weeks).
>
>* ...
>
>Can someone write up such a document?
>  
>
I volunteer to have a go at writing this.

Maybe I'll gather some extra inspiration while dealing with my broken 
ports and feedback PRs :)

-- 
Sam Lawrance    ph +61 0425 228 579    freenode: deft