It seems that the ports developers have a tool that they would like everyone to use, while members of the wider community want choice.
Context For my part I appreciated Hubbard's pkg_* tools. Later pkg* and the ports infrastructure underwent substantial change. After a few years pkg and the ports infrastructure settled down, improving the build flow. The ports infrastructure and maintainers' Makefiles enable the task of building applications tremendously simple. Though I've often cursed the constant additions to the ports infrastructure (/usr/ports/Mk, Makefile syntax, pkg), the improvements are accessible, understandable and substantially transparent. This is a better end-user experience. Poudriere adds another layer to the pkg -> ports infrastructure -> Makefile flow. Which is ok, but the changes are often opaque and near impossible for end-users to change. portmaster shell isn't easy to navigate but it is a simple tool that fits the needs of very many builders. The end-user should be the topic of focus and keeping them engaged and using the FreeBSD platform with 'easy to build applications' the objective which leads to advocacy and growth. History As a newbie I used the packages that were available in FreeBSD 2.2.8 which flourished my use of "the system". Over time I realised that the ports maintainer's option choices didn't reflect my needs. Now I have 490 changes to the ports options and modified 233 ports' Makefiles and files/. This customisation is based, in priority order: security, features, performance. So for me the ports system is fantastic, without it, it would be impossible to maintain the 2400+ ports that I use on our servers. An expectation that only packages should be used by our wider community is a false assumption for anything other than novice personal use. Changing the ports infrastructure so that a build requires poudriere is wrong and as we're seeing divisive. The PR's are also a cause for hesitancy (see ref below) Regards, Dewayne Ref: 1. https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&list_id=672566&query_format=advanced&short_desc=ports-mgmt%2Fpoudriere&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&list_id=672566&query_format=advanced&short_desc=ports-mgmt%2Fpkg&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr
