Build Failures and Problem Reports

Definition:

  • Pointy Hat: the mythical dunce cap awarded to FreeBSD committers who commit someting to the source tree that doesn't work, especially if it doesn't build in the first place

For each buildenv, test builds are continually run on a set of dedicated machines known as the pointyhat cluster, after the name of the machine that dispatches the jobs.

For maintained ports:

  • email is sent to the maintainer
  • maintainer should try to duplicate and fix; if so, then files a PR with the fix; if not, asks for help

Unmaintained ports, or ports the maintainer does not know how to fix, are marked with a special Makevar: BROKEN. BROKEN ports are neither built on the cluster nor installable (by default) by users (but they can override via 'make TRYBROKEN="yes" install')

BROKEN: fails to compile/install/deinstall correctly

IGNORE: incompatible for some reason (architecture, OS version, conflict with existing port)