Easy access to external repositories.

[David Strubbe]

> In our case: we have a community of astronomers that have requested a
> distribution mechanism for ESO software via MacPorts, which they are
> familiar with. However, our software is only relevant to astronomers (a few
> hundred users), rather than the much larger community that the default
> MacPorts repository it trying to target.
>

A few hundred users may well be more than the majority of ports have,
actually!


> So I thought that taking an optional extra repository approach (kind of
> like Fedora EPEL) would be the most appropriate.
> Another issue would be any differences between our release cycle at ESO
> versus the default MacPorts repository one. I just don't know how
> compatible these are at the moment. For the time being, it is lower risk
> for our astronomers for ESO to maintain its own package repository, which
> it has full control over.
> Would it nevertheless make sense to push our changes to the default
> MacPorts repository in the future? Perhaps. We have considered it and will
> likely revisit this idea again down the line.
>

If you are the maintainer, you should be able to have as much control as
you wish over the Portfiles and the release cycle. There is no "release
cycle" for ports really, you can just update them whenever you please.

David
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/attachments/20150601/3ce6009d/attachment.html>