What happens when a port fails to compile (+universal) and there is no maintainer?

[Bill Cole]

On 2022-08-22 at 10:26:14 UTC-0400 (Mon, 22 Aug 2022 15:26:14 +0100)
Philip Potter <potterpg at pgpotter.co.uk>
is rumored to have said:

> Hi,
>
> What happens when a port fails to compile (+universal) and there is no 
> maintainer?

The failure remains until someone with the right combination of skill 
and motivation fixes it.

I see you opened a bug repoert at https://trac.macports.org/ticket/65671 
so at least it is visible.

> ie jemalloc? <https://ports.macports.org/port/jemalloc/details/>
>
> The auto build build either an arm64 or an x86_64, so seems like no 
> one would ever know if a +universal build fails.

It's unclear to me why anyone would need a universal build for something 
so low-level. Looking *cursorily* at the errors in the log in your bug 
report, I suspect it may be due to the code not having support for a 
universal build. You may want to also open an upstream bug, if you can 
analyze it well enough to determine that upstream fixes are required.

> How or who resolves this kind of issue?

Maybe you? Maybe the upstream developers of jemalloc? Maybe no one? 
MacPorts is run by volunteers and has a very open contribution 
environment. To the best of my knowledge, there has not been any 
meaningful corporate support for the project for many years, so no one 
is really accountable for whether any particular bug is ever fixed.

Note that this is not meant as criticism of the MacPorts project in any 
way. It's the nature of FOSS: much of the work is done by people fixing 
their own issues and sharing the fixes.



-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Not Currently Available For Hire