Removal of Portmanager

[Bryan Drewery]

On 1/12/2013 6:07 AM, RW wrote:
>    "Does not support modern ports features such as MOVED, is lacking
>    upstream and active contributions, and does not support pkgng.
>    Consider using ports-mgmt/portmaster, ports-mgmt/portupgrade or
>    pkgng."
> 
> These seem more like bogus excuses than reasons.
> 
> Portmanager doesn't need MOVED, and the author chose not to support
> it. There's no compelling reason for portmanager users to switch to
> pkgng which may well be the reason no-one has done anything.
> 
> The logical time to remove portmanager is when there are no supported
> releases with support for the old package tools - if it's not been
> patched to support pkgng by then.

I do agree that harmless working ports should remain left untouched.
However, portmanager has lacked contributions for years now, while the
ports framework and goals have moved on. Yes pkgng is not default today,
but it will be someday, and pkg_install support will be removed. At that
time portmanager will stop working completely. Better to migrate now to
another tool. When pkgng does become default, you won't care as much as
the tool will just work the same as before.

The other reasons listed do matter as it lessens the overall user
experience of FreeBSD ports, if the tool you are using doesn't actually
utilize the framework fully or correctly.

If someone wants to step up and maintain and contribute to portmanager
please do; we can re-add it at any time.

Ps. This is coming from the person who got involved with FreeBSD when I
was saddened to see portupgrade deprecated. Now it is maintained and
properly handling various ports features.

Regards,
Bryan Drewery


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