What you cannot do is create old-style packages from a new ports
tree. This is because the ports infrastructure has been changing
since pkg_install was deprecated, and pkg_install simply will not
work with the current ports tree (and, as I understand it, cannot
practically be modified in order to work with it).
You are mostly correct. It is possible to modify and old ports-tree to
get the new software in. I have at least two customer paying me for
exact this work. But to be fair: it is no fun and harder with every
new release :D
I suppose what some customer need is an LTS version. Missing one is a
show stopper for FreeBSD usage in many firms i talked to. I do not
think this is a good idea from a technical point - but firms are slow
and want stability.
LTS of the base system or ports? The base system is already quite well
supported long-term. In this particular case it's probably not ports per
se but more the package manager? Because ports are not really FreeBSD's,
they are separate applications, each one of which is supported as long
as its author is willing to do so.
Unless you mean the model adopted by some Linux companies, namely taking
the ports tree, freezing applications at some specific versions, and
only apply security and critical bug fixes to those applications? That
would mean creating and maintaining sources for all applications listed
in ports, rather than the ports tree itself! And that would be quite a
task considering that many applications have multiple configurable
compilation options. Not sure if it would be worth the effort if most
companies only need a limited set of applications from the whole tree.
On the other hand, if that was done then you would be left with no work :)
Grzegorz
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