Ports Life-Cycle

Ports that remain marked BROKEN for a period of time will be marked with two more makevars, DEPRECATED and EXPIRATION_DATE. These are advisory variables only; however, portsmon sends a report about them periodically.

Intention: provide "fair warning" to users; help increase community involvement.

Any ports committer can removed expired ports.

Expired ports are added to the MOVED file and the user will be asked whether or not to delete it on the next ports update.

Removed ports stay in the MOVED file permanently (unless they are at some point reinstated, at which time the entry is removed).

Expiration dates are not cast in stone; the intention is to try to remove unworkable ports to avoid frustrating users.