*-devel ports

[Thomas de Grivel]

2008/2/5, js <ebgssth at gmail.com>:
> On Feb 5, 2008 9:57 PM, Thomas de Grivel <billitch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2008/2/4, Vincent Lefevre <vincent-opdarw at vinc17.org>:
> > > On 2008-02-04 11:27:24 -0600, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> > > > Regarding the suggestion to rename all *-devel ports to *-latest, in
> > > > light of the above change, the name "latest" would indeed seem to be
> > > > clearer. It would also remove any potential confusion with the RPM -
> > > > devel packages, which IMHO would be quite a good thing.
> > >
> > > I think this would be a good idea.
> > >
> > > > I guess this is as good a time as any to bring up the "tin" ports:
> > > >
> > > > $ port search ^tin$ ^tin-
> > > > tin                            news/tin       1.8.3        A threaded
> > > > NNTP and spool based UseNet newsreader
> > > > tin-devel                      news/tin-devel 1.7.10       A threaded
> > > > NNTP and spool based UseNet newsreader
> > > > tin-recent                     news/tin-recent 1.9.2        A Usenet
> > > > newsreader
> > > > $
> > > >
> > > > Now, ignore the version numbers shown for a minute. Based on comments in
> > > > the header of "tin-recent" (copied below), it seems to be the
> > > > maintainer's intention (hey, that's you, Vincent!) that "tin" is the
> > > > latest released version, "tin-devel" is the latest development version,
> > > > and "tin-recent" is the more recent of the two. It looks like someone has
> > > > updated tin-recent but forgotten to update tin-devel. So, to match
> > >
> > > AFAIK, tin-devel is no longer maintained (and perhaps no longer used).
> > >
> > > > Vincent's new proposals, "tin-devel" gets deleted and "tin-recent" gets
> > > > renamed to "tin-latest", yes?
> > >
> > > +1 for this new policy.
> >
> > Then we would have to warn new users about -latest not being so stable
> > because intuitively I would like the latest version to be installed
> > but what retains me the the previous one is that "it just works". For
> > the sake of stability I would have -unstable marked clearly, so that
> > the users dont expect too much magic with -latest.
>
> I think -devel is better.
> For one thing, it's more intuitive.
> Second, this naming convension is already used in FreeBSD
> so at least BSD users prefers -devel one.
>
> By the way, I think MacPorts is not for everyone,
> I mean, it's mostly for developer or kinds of techies, right?
> So  IMHO providing an easy access to the latest, greatest software is
> more important thant prevent users from using might-be-unstable-software.
> Bad idea?

Of course, I did not mean to prevent anyone from doing anything ! Just
make it the default if not proven unstable, or mark it as unstable (or
devel) if it is. I agree with you that the latest version must be
available by default, just what do you do when it is broken or breaks
other ports or break the system ? Hey, I dont just hack programs, I
also use them sometimes  ^^;

By the way, I'm a kind of a techie but I also often run into end-users
who end up having macports installed by me because open source should
be for everyone and I just wish they use it on their own and do not
bug me (or you !) about it every time they install/upgrade something.
Maybe we lack resources or feel like hackers but I'm sure we should
definitely not deliberately make things unintuitive / uneasy.

Vincent Lefevre <vincent-opdarw at vinc17.org> wrote:
> On the other hand, the development version is sometimes less buggy
> than the stable version. This is the case of mutt, zsh and lynx
> (for which there have been recommendations to use the development
> versions).

Is there a reason for keeping an older version non-devel even when the
-devel version is more stable ? Why not upgrade the default to the
-devel version in this case ? My point of view is : have the latest
version as the default, unless it is quite broken in some way, in this
case make it a -devel version.

Anyway, -devel should mean "for developers" right ?

-- 
  Thomas de Grivel

 (ps: replying above previous messages is totally unreadable, and
don't quote the sigs ;)