Index: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/keeping-up/chapter.xml =================================================================== --- head/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/keeping-up/chapter.xml (revision 45577) +++ head/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/keeping-up/chapter.xml (revision 45578) @@ -1,159 +1,158 @@ Keeping Up The &os; Ports Collection is constantly changing. Here is some information on how to keep up. FreshPorts One of the easiest ways to learn about updates that have already been committed is by subscribing to FreshPorts. - You can select multiple ports to monitor. Maintainers are + Multiple ports can be monitored. Maintainers are strongly encouraged to subscribe, because they will receive notification of not only their own changes, but also any changes that any other &os; committer has made. (These are often necessary to keep up with changes in the underlying ports framework—although it would be most polite to receive an advance heads-up from those committing such changes, sometimes - this is overlooked or just simply impractical. Also, in some + this is overlooked or impractical. Also, in some cases, the changes are very minor in nature. We expect everyone to use their best judgement in these cases.) - If you wish to use FreshPorts, all you need is an account. - If your registered email address is - @FreeBSD.org, you will see the opt-in link on - the right hand side of the webpages. For those of you who - already have a FreshPorts account, but are not using your - @FreeBSD.org email address, just change your - email to @FreeBSD.org, subscribe, then change - it back again. + To use FreshPorts, an account is required. Those with + registered email addresses at @FreeBSD.org + will see the opt-in link on the right-hand side of the web + pages. Those who already have a FreshPorts account but are not + using a @FreeBSD.org email address can change + the email to @FreeBSD.org, subscribe, then + change it back again. FreshPorts also has a sanity test feature which automatically tests each commit to the &os; ports tree. If - subscribed to this service, you will be notified of any errors - which FreshPorts detects during sanity testing of your + subscribed to this service, a committer will receive notifications + of any errors which FreshPorts detects during sanity testing of their commits. The Web Interface to the Source Repository It is possible to browse the files in the source repository by using a web interface. Changes that affect the entire port system are now documented in the CHANGES file. Changes that affect individual ports are now documented in the UPDATING file. However, the definitive answer to any question is undoubtedly to read the source code of bsd.port.mk, and associated files. The &os; Ports Mailing List - If you maintain ports, you should consider following the + As a ports maintainer, consider subscribing to &a.ports;. Important changes to the way ports work will be announced there, and then committed to CHANGES. - If this mailing list is too high volume you may consider - following &a.ports-announce; which is moderated and has no - discussion. + If the volume of messages on this mailing list is too high, + consider following &a.ports-announce; which contains only + announcements. The &os; Port Building Cluster One of the least-publicized strengths of &os; is that an entire cluster of machines is dedicated to continually building the Ports Collection, for each of the major OS releases and for each Tier-1 architecture. Individual ports are built unless they are specifically marked with IGNORE. Ports that are marked with BROKEN will still be attempted, to see if the underlying problem has been resolved. (This is done by passing TRYBROKEN to the port's Makefile.) Portscout: the &os; Ports Distfile Scanner The build cluster is dedicated to building the latest release of each port with distfiles that have already been fetched. However, as the Internet continually changes, distfiles can quickly go missing. Portscout, the &os; Ports distfile scanner, attempts to query every download site for every port to find out if each distfile is still available. Portscout can generate HTML reports and send emails about newly available ports to those who request them. Unless not otherwise subscribed, maintainers are asked to check periodically for changes, either by hand or using the RSS feed. Portscout's first page gives the email address of the port maintainer, the number of ports the maintainer is responsible for, the number of those ports with new distfiles, and the percentage of those ports that are out-of-date. The search function allows for searching by email - address for a specific maintainer, and for selecting whether or - not only out-of-date ports should be shown. + address for a specific maintainer, and for selecting whether + only out-of-date ports are shown. Upon clicking on a maintainer's email address, a list of all of their ports is displayed, along with port category, current version number, whether or not there is a new version, when the port was last updated, and finally when it was last checked. A search function on this page allows the user to search for a specific port. Clicking on a port name in the list displays the FreshPorts port information. The &os; Ports Monitoring System Another handy resource is the &os; Ports Monitoring System (also known as portsmon). This system comprises a database that processes information from several sources and allows it to be browsed via a web interface. Currently, the ports Problem Reports (PRs), the error logs from the build cluster, and individual files from the ports collection are used. In the future, this will be expanded to include the distfile survey, as well as other sources. - To get started, you can view all information about a - particular port by using the To get started, use the Overview - of One Port. + of One Port search page to find all the information + about a port. - As of this writing, this is the only resource available that - maps GNATS PR entries to portnames. (PR submitters do not + This is the only resource available that + maps PR entries to portnames. PR submitters do not always include the portname in their Synopsis, although we would - prefer that they did.) So, portsmon is a - good place to start if you want to find out whether an existing - port has any PRs filed against it and/or any build errors; or, - to find out if a new port that you may be thinking about + prefer that they did. So, portsmon is a + good place to find out whether an existing + port has any PRs filed against it, any build errors, or + if a new port the porter is considering creating has already been submitted.