On Dec 15, 2010, at 17:31, Joshua Root wrote: > On 2010-12-16 07:37 , Ryan Schmidt wrote: >> In private email and in http://trac.macports.org/ticket/27574#comment:7 the >> developer of obc expressed the desire to have been contacted both about the >> existence of this port and in regard to some questions that were raised >> about the port in that ticket that he might have been able to answer more >> quickly or more accurately than we were eventually able to guess. >> >> I think his suggestion is a good one. I especially think it bears mentioning >> that when you write a new portfile, you should contact the developer and let >> them know that. This prepares them for the day that a user sends them a >> message that says "I installed your software with MacPorts" and prevents >> them from then having to wonder "What's MacPorts?" or "How did my software >> get in there?" If the developer has a list of places from which to get their >> software, this also gives them an opportunity to add MacPorts to the list, >> thus even improving our publicity. I realize I've done this for some ports >> I've written, but it hasn't occurred to me to do so when handling port >> submissions in the issue tracker, and it seems like maybe this is a step >> that should be handled by the port author, not the committer (though it >> would certainly be reasonable for the committer handling the ticket to >> remind the submitter to do this step). >> >> The Guide doesn't currently say much at all about creating new ports. It >> says [1] "You may contribute new ports" and "Ports are contributed by >> following these steps". I think it would benefit from an introductory >> paragraph that includes a mention of working with or at least contacting the >> software developer, though I'm not sure what else the paragraph should say. >> Suggestions? > > I wouldn't want to be contacted by every single distro that happens to > be distributing my software, just because they're distributing it. The > nature of freely distributable software is that it's going to end up all > over the place.
We've even had some software developers who were actively hostile toward the idea of their programs being used on a Mac. Those conversations were not a source of spiritual enrichment. And yet, the developer of obc felt taken aback that we did not contact him. It's hard to make everyone happy all the time, I guess. I suppose the middle ground is for us to say that port authors *may* wish to inform upstream developers. Perhaps a good metric would be to check the developer's web site to see if they already list other ways their software can be installed; if they already list Portage or FreeBSD Ports or Fink or something, it's not a stretch to think they might like to include a mention of MacPorts as well. > The submitter of this particular port did need to ask upstream about > some things. If you want to write up something recommending that port > authors ask upstream about any technical issues they encounter building > or using the software, go ahead, but that just seems like a completely > obvious and common sense thing to me. That seems obvious to me too. In the case of obc, I don't believe the port author contacted the developer, and I think we did fine with the port anyway. _______________________________________________ macports-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev
