The ports tree is now tagged and partially thawed. Until 7.2 is released, sweeping commits still need explicit approval from portmgr to assure that tags can be slipped for potential security issues. For more information what constitutes a sweeping change, see the portmgr web pages.

The ports tree is now frozen for the 7.2 release cycle.

No commits will be allowed without explicit portmgr approval. We hope we can keep the freeze short and go into slush after two weeks. The tree will be completely unfrozen after the release is announced. For the full schedule, see the release schedule.

As always, only commit that fix existing breakage will be allowed during the freeze and we encourage everyone will help fix as many ports as possible for this release. For more information about what kinds of commits are allowed during which period, please see the portmgr policies webpage.

The ports freeze for the upcoming release of 7.2 will start in one week time on April 13. Release packages will be built immediately and have to be ready for RC2 which is scheduled for April 20. To keep the freeze as short as possible, the date might be moved depending on any delays in the src release process. Also, to keep this freeze this short we kindly ask anyone with commits in their queues that might have any larger effect on the packages to run their changes by portmgr from today to make sure no new regressions are introduced.

As always, we are looking for volunteers to fix outstanding errors, and this is a good time to focus on existing errors and regressions instead of new features to make sure as many packages can be included in the
release.

For a list of outstanding build errors, please see this link.

Remember: All commits after April 13 need explicit approval from portmgr!

Quoting Joe Marcus Clarke:

The ports tree has been unfrozen, and is now in the usual “slush” state
pending the releases of 6.4 and 7.1. This means no sweeping commits (or
commits which change a large number of files) until these releases are
announced. If you are in doubt as to whether or not a commit could be
considered sweeping, please ask portmgr.

A short description of what a sweeping commit is, can be seen on the portmgr webpage, or send us an email.

In preparation for both the 6.4 and 7.1 releases, the ports tree has been frozen. All commits have to be approved by portmgr. See the portmgr webpage for more information about what is and isn’t allowed during the freeze. We are aiming for a short freeze period, so we will be quite strict in allowing commits during the freeze. Of course, we do appreciate any help fixing existing errors in the tree, so if anyone is bored, a good starting point will be portsmon.

Two more people fell for the usual trick. Apart from sending the usual many PRs, Max Brazhnikov has been very helpful in the KDE4 upgrade that happened a few weeks ago and Martin Wilke sponsored him for a commit bit. Josh Paetzel has been around for a long time, both on the mailinglists and IRC, and of course, sending a lot of patches, and Ade Lovett decided to sponsor a commit bit for him. Welcome to the both of you!

Renato Botelho found yet another very active submitter and applied the usual punishment. Please welcome Robert Noland to the ranks of the ports committers!

Philip has been working on apache for a long time and has been increasingly interesting in FreeBSD as well. Marcelo Araujo finally stepped in and made him commit his own patches. Philip is going to be a great addition to our ports team!

Yet another guy that just keeps sending patches. At least until now, when Beech Rintoul is starting to mentor him with his own commit bit. Welcome aboard!

As of June 1, 2008 00:00:00 UTC, FreeBSD 5.X support in the ports tree
is End Of Life. This means that a ports tree checked out after this
date is not guaranteed to produce usable packages on 5.X. Additionally,
5.X package builds on the cluster will cease. Users are encouraged to
upgrade to 6.3 or 7.0 if they wish to continue to track the latest ports
tree.

A tag, RELEASE_5_EOL, has been laid down to mark the last point in the
ports tree that officially supported FreeBSD 5.X. Port Manager asks
that you not rush to remove 5.X support right away as we’d like a
settling-down period, and we want secteam to have a chance to make their
EOL announcements as well.