@fraenki:

I thought this repository https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense-packages actually is the community effort to bring additional (not fully supported) packages to pfSense. With 86 different contributors it just looks like a community effort. Is there a policy regarding contributions to the pfsense-packages repository?

Currently there is just that one package repo for all packages and it's coded as the default for all pfSense users. Yes there are many user contributed and supported packages there but some are officially supported. The Squid 2/ Squidguard packages for example I believe are officially maintained and supported as are things like the Shellcmd and Patches packages.

I have not seen any package guidelines. The packages system has developed from a few simple things into what there is today. It has been suggested that more than one repo be used and I'm all for that. Currently all packages appear to all users and that means that inevitably someone will start ticking boxes randomly and when everything breaks will complain loudly that everything should work perfectly because it's in the official package repo. This in turn means that the devs are understandably reluctant to add packages to that repo, especially if they have wide-ranging dependencies.

Having seperate package repos with some sort of check box, 'include unofficial packages', would negate much of this problem. You could have a 'testing' repo for packages such as yours that could then be moved up to 'community' after sufficiently few boxes caught fire. ;)

Having a check box etc would require an update to the webgui code but you could do it right now by just setting up another repo and having anyone who wants to use it manually point their box at it.

Steve