Per precedent (bug 206922), statements that lead one to believe that portupgrade or portmaster tools are "recommended" need to be removed from documentation. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/ports-using.html Chapter 4.5.3. Upgrading Ports Last line: "To perform the actual upgrade, use either Portmaster or Portupgrade." Ways of addressing: A) change to a generic statement (e.g. mention repository builder or build tool by description, not name) B) list every possible current tool by name (e.g. add poudriere and synth, there could be others) C) remove the line. Is it needed?
A form of alternative B seems the most appropriate. We gradually have a bewildering number of tools. Which are still being maintained? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? As I said in the previous PR, I don't believe we should be removing documentation for tools which are still available.
Even if the line were removed completely, it wouldn't qualify as "removing documentation for the tool". It's being interpreted as an official recommendation to use those specific tools, and it's recommendation that would be removed. Option B is fine, but I would have thought option A or C would be preferable myself.
I'm not portmgr anymore, so I would share what was discussed long ago. While it is true portmaster and portupgrade are still in ports, none of them are still in active maintenance. We discussed a lot between portmgr about removing portmaster/portupgrade from the handbook. Beside some drawbacks of those tools which yes could be documented as "pro/cons" for true, no active maintenance is also a problem regarding some evolution that are planned in the ports tree for very long: subpackages and alternative/flavours. which will break the design around which portupgrade and portmaster are built: a port is unique via its origin. portmaster took years to catch up on pkg_install -> pkg transition (portupgrade was a bit faster to catch up due to active maintenance from bdrewery on portupgrade at the time). I would vote on removing documentation of both tools in the handbook
Created attachment 178735 [details] patch to Handbook chapter on ports
What will become the biggest benefit of poudriere and synth over port* is that port* are not actively updated and will break soon when major new features are added to the ports system.
Looks fine to me :)
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