Who was the mental genius

[Alfred Perlstein]

On 6/5/14, 7:32 PM, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> --On June 5, 2014 at 11:50:38 PM +0200 Guido Falsi <mad at madpilot.net> 
> wrote:
>
>> On 06/05/14 23:43, Paul Schmehl wrote:
>>> --On June 5, 2014 at 11:18:31 PM +0200 "A.J. 'Fonz' van Werven"
>>> <freebsd at skysmurf.nl> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Paul Schmehl wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> That decided it was a good idea to completely break ports to force
>>>>> people to upgrade?  You couldn't come up with a warning system 
>>>>> instead
>>>>> of outright breaking ports?  The idiots are apparently running the
>>>>> asylum.  {{sigh}}
>>>>
>>>> It might help to know exactly what you're talking about... What is it
>>>> that
>>>> broke?
>>>>
>>>
>>> The change to make that causes this when you run pkg commands or try to
>>> build ports:
>>>
>>> Unknown modifier 't'
>>>
>>> It was done deliberately to break ports so that people would be forced
>>> to upgrade to a supported version.
>>>
>>> <https://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=46291>
>>
>> No it was not done "deliberately"
>>
>> Newer freebsd version moved to a newer make utility, and support for the
>> old one has been dropped after support for all old releases containing
>> it was ceased.
>>
>
> So they dropped the support accidentally?  Is this really the time to 
> argue semantics?
>
>> Which releases are supported and for how long is well known, and
>> published in here when a new release is published:
>>
>> http://www.freebsd.org/security/security.html#sup
>>
>> The updates are free, as in "no payment needed". What's keeping you from
>> performing a binary update of the base system every year or so?
>>
>
> I have two hosts on the internet for which the backup system failed.  
> I didn't catch it right away, so now I'm several days behind on 
> backups.  I need to install a new system, but it requires ports I 
> don't yet have installed.  So now I have two options; upgrade with my 
> fingers crossed and hope it works or scramble to find some way to 
> backup before I upgrade just in case the upgrade fails.
>
>> Running such an old system as any of the unsupported releases is also
>> most probably exposing you to security vulnerabilities.
>>
>
> First of all, 8.3 is not an old system.  Secondly, you used to be able 
> to run "old" systems for a long time after support was dropped without 
> encountering issues like this.  Finally, I'm a port maintainer of a 
> fair number of ports, so FreeBSD isn't free for me.  I put a lot of 
> time into it.
>
> When such a drastic change is made, it should be well advertised in 
> advance (think the pkgng announcement you get every time you install a 
> port) and not implemented in such a disruptive manner. It's clear from 
> the forum announcement that I linked to that I was not the only one 
> caught by surprise and that it didn't even work on supported versions 
> when the change was first implemented.
>
>> Sometimes to change things you need to break compatibility, the project
>> did wait till it was coherent with what was promised before doing this.
>>
>
> What you call "the project" is made up of people.  SOMEONE should be 
> thinking through the impact on end users and helping to plan such 
> major transitions in a way that's least disruptive IF you want the 
> system to remain viable.
>
> Perhaps this is part of the reason adoption of FreeBSD has dropped so 
> dramatically over the years.  I'm retiring in 18 months.  When I 
> leave, the last FreeBSD system goes with me.  No one is even 
> interested in learning it any more.  FreeBSD used to rule the web.  
> Now it's Linux.  There's a lesson in there for those that are 
> listening, but apparently "the project" is not. Which is sad, because 
> FreeBSD, IMNSHO, is a very good OS.
>
> There's no need to respond to this.  I'm just venting.  And clearly my 
> opinion doesn't matter anyway.
I think your opinion matters.

I agree I would be rudely surprised by such a breakage myself.  That 
said we need to find a way to desupport things eventually.

Any ideas on what should have been done that can be done in a short 
amount of code as possible?  Perhaps there's some way to determine 
between the old and new makes and just add some kind of target like:

# psuedo make(1) code:
.ifndef THIS_IS_NEW_MAKE
.BEGIN:
    echo your system is running an unsupported version of FreeBSD the 
last version to support this is r232423
    echo please run "svn update -r232423" to get a working ports tree as 
of that date or upgrade to a more recent
    echo freebsd release using freebsd-update [[insert link to 
freebsd-update]]
    exit 1
.endif

-Alfred