I'm starting this thread to solicit comments about what we (as a community) want to do with new ports and orphan ports ?
When do we add a new port to the svn ? And when does it become available in the autobuild server ? As far as I can tell there are no rules or guidelines today - its more a gut feel call by the devs with svn commit access. Which is okay with me as it stands - they do the work, can recognize good code when the see it, and handle the complaints. And adding a new port is more complicated & time consuming than making a small patch.
Also, what do we do about ports that kind of stall ? (e.g. read the
sx210is porting thread ) Do we capture the code "as is" in the svn in the hopes that somebody will pick it up at some point ? (marked Alpha / SKIP_AUTOBUILD). The links to download sites in the forum threads tend to expire - and the code is lost. And even when not lost, it quickly gets out of date so that it does not build against the current svn.
One issue here is code quality. A port with lots of support and a good dev team is ideal. What about the rest - how do we decide when a well meaning person struggling through the porting process for the first time has produced something to share with others ?
Another thing to consider - there was a recent post about a porting effort that was near success with good executable files posted when the dev had a hard drive crash and lost all his source. A culture of early and frequent svn updates might have helped there.
Or maybe we should just stay with the "survival of the fittest" we have now - ports that get released need to have one or more devs that take it all the way ? Tends to ensure that what gets in the svn is fairly solid I think ?
