On 2007-Jul-15 16:59:33 -0700, Jonathan Dama <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >Strictly speaking the EOL means that the base has been abandoned by the >security officer and the ports collection, not that it is abandoned entirely.
The ports tree is not branched. (The reasons for this can be found in the archives). The ports build infrastructure, as well as individual ports, need to include whatever special-casing is necessary to make them build on all supported releases. Maintaining all this glue takes effort, slows down all the builds and makes the ports harder to read. Once support for RELENG_4 was removed, there was no longer a requirement for the ports tree to be buildable and the glue to make it build on 4.x could be (and, in many cases, has been) removed. Specifically, the core ports infrastructure (ports/Mk) is known to now be incompatible with 4.x. >People with commit access may still make contributions into RELENG_4... Yes but that doesn't cover the ports tree. >Anyways I'm only trying to act within the constraints that I've been given. >My mandate does not include upgrading to RELENG_6 so your advice is not >immediately useful. Please keep in mind that FreeBSD is a volunteer project. I believe that it provides a very professional level of support at no cost. When FreeBSD 4.11 was released in January 2005, it was announced that it would be the last release off the RELENG_4 branch and that it would be supported for 2 years - this EOL date was regularly repeated. Note that 4.11 post-dates FreeBSD 5.3 (which could reasonably be considered a mature RELENG_5 release) and the EOL date provided an 8 month overlap with FreeBSD 6.1 (for those who dislike .0 releases). IMO, this is more than adequate notice to allow a planned migration. Note that whilst the FreeBSD Project no longer provides support for 4.x, there is nothing stopping you negotiating whatever level of support you require from one of the consultants listed on the FreeBSD site, or elsewhere. Likewise, there's no rule that says you must build third-party software using the ports system. You are free to maintain third-party software using its native configuration mechanisms. If you feel that the FreeBSD project is being unreasonable, please try (eg) asking Sun for support for SunOS 4.1.3. -- Peter Jeremy
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