a-port-devel: what is the good practice

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 4, 2013, at 02:07, Joël Brogniart wrote:

> I'd like to add a new port for the developer version of the auto-multiple-choice application based on a recent subversion version. What are the best practices?
> 
> - Should I define the port for the last subversion revision or for a specific revision?
> - If the port is defined for a specific revision, how often should I update the port: once a month, more frequently, less frequently, at will?
> - What are your advice for a devel port?

You must specify a specific revision because builds must be reproducible. 

Unless the developers actually have a strategy of releasing a number of development builds before a new stable build, we usually only create devel ports when there's a particular need, for example a new feature or bugfix that you want to test that hasn't been released in a stable version yet. How often to update the port is up to you. For example you might stop updating the port altogether once you've verified the feature or bugfix works, and once the next stable version incorporating it is released, you might retire the devel port.

With most of my devel ports, like glib2-devel, pango-devel, cairo-devel, libpixman-devel, when I update is dictated by when the developers release a new development version. With one of them though, graphviz-devel, new development versions are released automatically every 24 hours, so I don't update the port quite that often; I tend to update that one about every 10 days, but that's because I'm quite interested in graphviz.