# MacPorts Policies

## About this Chapter

This chapter contains policies and procedures, as well as responsbilities for the MacPorts Project.

## Port Maintenance Protocol

MacPorts does not enforce exclusive write access to the maintainer of a given Port, however it is normal practice to inform the maintainer before making any changes to a Port. Detailed procedures are described below.

### Updating Ports You Do Not Maintain

If you have identified a port for which you have a suggestion, because it is broken, insecure, out of date or could be enhanced in some way you should:

1. Write patch for the port that resolves the issue, and email maintainer or file a bug in Trac, appropriately assigned to the maintainer of the port. If you can't write a patch, file a bug and ignore the following steps...
2. Wait for response from maintainer. You should receive a response within 72hrs. Once you are in a dialog with a maintainer, the maintainer should review and apply patches.
3. If a response is not received within 72hrs another committer should review the patches and update the port (this may be the person originally submitting the patches). If the person suggesting the changes does not have write-access to the repository, they should send an email to macports-dev@lists.macosforge.org with a summary of the bug and a reference to a Trac bug.

There are several situations in which this procedure can be waived:

1. A mass update to macports which touches many ports (usually because of a change in the macports infrastructure)
2. The port is broken in a way that requires urgent action. This may be because the port breaks system functionality or the current version has a serious security problem.
3. The port maintainer is not defined or is assigned to nomaintainer@macports.org. Feel free to take over such ports!
4. The port is abandoned by it's current maintainer. i.e. Any Port with a 'Port Abandoned' bug (explained below) can be updated without contacting the maintainer.

### Port Abandonment

Abandonment is defined as when a bug has not been acknowledged for more than 3 weeks after the bug was filed. If this occurs a new bug should be filed in Trac against the port with the subject: [Port Abandoned] and that port should reference the ignored bug.

The Port Abandoned bug should be resolved when a new maintainer is assigned.

## Committer's Category Responsibility List

MacPorts has at least one committer responsible for each category of ports (`www`, `textproc`, etc). This is a list of those committers.

### Committer's Category Responsibility List

Category | Committer A | Committer B
--- | --- | ---
aqua |  |
archivers | waqar [at] opendarwin.org |
audio | macdome [at] opendarwin.org |
benchmarks | toby [at] opendarwin.org |
cad |  |
comms | fenner [at] opendarwin.org |
cross | pguyot [at] kallisys.net |
databases | cms [at] opendarwin.org | macdome [at] opendarwin.org
devel |  |
editors | waqar [at] opendarwin.org | olegb [at] opendarwin.org
emulators |  |
games | toby [at] opendarwin.org |
genealogy |  |
gnome | olegb [at] opendarwin.org |
graphics | jkh [at] opendarwin.org |
irc |  |
java | jberry [at] opendarwin.org | mww [at] opendarwin.org
lang | gwright [at] opendarwin.org |
mail | cms [at] opendarwin.org |
math | gwright [at] opendarwin.org | macdome [at] opendarwin.org
multimedia |  |
net | fenner [at] opendarwin.org |
news |  |
palm |  |
perl | yeled [at] opendarwin.org |
print | cms [at] opendarwin.org |
python | mww [at] opendarwin.org |
ruby |  |
science |  |
security | yeled [at] opendarwin.org |
shells | waqar [at] opendarwin.org |
sysutils | ssen [at] opendarwin.org |
textproc |  |
www | cms [at] opendarwin.org |
x11 | jkh [at] opendarwin.org | olegb [at] opendarwin.org
zope |  |