[talk] a Port Maintainer day conference in NYC

[Raul Cuza]

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 12:46 PM, George Rosamond
<george at ceetonetechnology.com> wrote:
> I'm forking this from my previous email, to open up the discussion and
> generate some concrete ideas.
>
> I'll repeat the basis:
>
> after Brian C's OpenBSD porting meeting last night, it became clear that
> there's a decent critical mass of port maintainers in the NYC area from
> the BSD projects.
>
> This specifically means people who port third-party applications to one
> BSD or another for inclusion in the respective ports and packages. It
> might include people who build and maintain large Mozilla ports, or
> simple shell-based utilities. There might even be those involved in the
> actual port-building infrastructure, ie, the Make environment that the
> ports systems dwell in.
>
> Assembling a bunch of them wouldn't be trivial, as we'd need space,
> etc., but we could probably do this without a lot of extras past
> NYCBSDCons require. Think no heavy sponsors, no catered food (except
> maybe pizzas), no hotels.
>
> There's some important issues to establish first:
>
> * is the event aimed at current maintainers talking to other maintainers?
>
> * if above is true, what topics would actually have them speaking the
> same tongue to make the event worthwhile?
>
> * would prospective maintainers be included on some level?
>
> * if above is true, would porting workshops (like last night) be part of
> the agenda?
>
> Anyways, I hope this opens up some discussion on the topic, since this
> will be the basis to determine whether this sort of event is feasible in
> NYC.
>
> g
>
> --
>
>
> 5822 F82D 665B 5C6A 915B FAD4 B014 1CEE 545A A6C6
>
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I think this is a great idea.

I would recommend making it open to current port maintainers and to
people interested in maintaining one or more ports. I'd probably break
the day up into two parts, with the first part being for people who
maintain ports. This part of the day can be organized unconference
style (i.e. the topics are generated by the people who show up) with
space/time being given to hands on work and collaboration. The second
half of the day would include new porters with one or more laptop-open
tutorials (similar to Brian's talk on Wednesday).

I'd like to see software developers show up. No better way to have
people use your software than to make it easy to install.

It would be like an install fest but for ports.

Raúl