Allowing more non-maintainer updates

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Jul 24, 2009, at 6:07 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>> * Required port variable missing (e.g. platforms or  
>>> long_description)
>>
>> If required, I'd technically call that broken.
>
> A port missing the platforms line will still install fine. AFAIK no  
> part of MacPorts currently uses it. But lint will complain about it  
> and documentation says it must be there and MacPorts base might use  
> it in the future so we should be allowed to add it to portfiles  
> without consulting the maintainer.

... but as for right now, if the port isn't broken it doesn't really  
hurt to open a ticket for the maintainer to look at (you can offer in  
the ticket to commit the change if you want). Without communication,  
the maintainer may never really realize that he or she forgot something.

[snip]

> I agree it's subjective which is why I'm hesitant. But my motivation  
> is as you say, maintainers not being aware of what's possible, and  
> doing something a complicated way when it can be done more simply.  
> And since maintainers often look at other ports to see how to do  
> things, we would want to get unnecessarily complicated code out of  
> portfiles so those methods aren't then learned and copied by others.

In this case, I think it's even more clear that the maintainer should  
be communicated with as we want to be spreading around this kind of  
knowledge as much as possible.

... and again, if the port is working, it's not really hurting end- 
users, so I think it's OK for there to be some small delay in getting  
it updated.

Perhaps the guideline of how long we wait for maintainer timeouts  
needs to be adjusted (or adjusted for this case?), but I would still  
like to see communication for this kind of thing (so we can all learn  
from each other).

--
Daniel J. Luke
+========================================================+
| *---------------- dluke at geeklair.net ----------------* |
| *-------------- http://www.geeklair.net -------------* |
+========================================================+
|   Opinions expressed are mine and do not necessarily   |
|          reflect the opinions of my employer.          |
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