Hi everyone,

Just for fun, let’s designate June 15th as the inaugural International FreeBSD Adopt-A-Port Day for 2009!

My colleague and co-mentor to Alexander Logvinov, Thomas Abthorpe, posted to the freebsd-ports mailing list in March looking for folks to adopt unmaintained FreeBSD ports and keep them up to date.

I’d like to continue Thomas’ effort and find out who in the FreeBSD community is interested in taking on one or more unmaintained ports. Some current stats:

FreeBSD ports info page (20325 total ports as of June 4th, 2009)

FreeBSD unmaintained port list (4719 as of June 4th, 2009, 77 with build errors)

FreeBSD unmaintained ports that need upgrading (253 as of June 4th, 2009)

If you are interested in maintaining a port, contributing PRs for port upgrades, and perhaps eventually becoming a ports committer, read the following documents to get a good overview of the process:

• http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/contributing-ports/index.html
• http://wiki.freebsd.org/PortsTasks
• http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2002/01/31/Big_Scary_Daemons.html

I started my own path to becoming a FreeBSD ports tree committer by discovering that a web application (WebCalendar) that we use at SourceHosting.net was not part of the tree.  I read up on how to create a new port, submitted a PR for it, and after review by an existing FreeBSD committer, it was added to the tree.  Now other WebCalendar users can install it on FreeBSD as easily as typing:

cd /usr/ports/www/webcalendar && make install clean

After a port is added to the tree, a maintainer keeps track of upstream package releases, updates the port to track the new version, adds any needed configuration options and makes sure that it builds and installs on the FreeBSD supported platforms. As payback, you’ll often hear from folks using your port, whether sending thanks, enhancement requests or the occasional bug report!

Since submitting that first PR, I have created a number of new ports for tools used at SourceHosting.net or just in my areas of interest.  I have adopted many as well. Most unmaintained ports are very undemanding and just need some minor TLC! It’s a great way to support a project that has contributed directly to the success of my Real Job.

Have any questions or guidance? Email me at glarkin@FreeBSD.org, follow me on Twitter or comment here. We’d love to work with you!

Keep in touch,
Greg
SourceHosting.net, LLC