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Date:      Mon, 04 Aug 1997 01:15:32 -0700
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
To:        Andreas Klemm <andreas@klemm.gtn.com>
Cc:        dg@root.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Make this a relese coordinator decision (was Re: ports-current/packages-current discontinued) 
Message-ID:  <20709.870682532@time.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 04 Aug 1997 07:52:39 %2B0200." <19970804075239.10145@klemm.gtn.com> 

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> Ok, what I didnīt know was, that you need tcl for your new 
> administration tool. ok.

Yes, that's why I've resisted the idea of creating a separate
collection for release.  Now I also agree with those who've said that
/usr/src/release has been mismanaged in the past due to having 3-way
merges be necessary every time I make some change, but it's not my
intention to keep setup as a purely installation-time tool the way
sysinstall was.

In fact, I rather hope to make the actual "installation" part of it
very small, essentially no more than a very minimal nucleus which
partitions the disk, gets some bootstrap bits onto it and then _stops_
at that point.  When you boot off the hard disk, that's when setup
will take over again and let you add additional components, configure
interfaces, etc and so forth.

Setup would also be the tool used for managing the configuration in
general, its functionality extended by dropping TCL scripts into
certain locations rather than having to go hack the C code for
sysinstall (a real wart, that's been).

Anyway, so that's why I'd like to keep it as part of /usr/src - I want
bug fixes to propagate with the next make world so if somebody finds a
disk-eating bug or something, I can get it fixed quickly on people's
systems by simply telling them to cvsup and make the world.

FWIW, I was also a strong advocate of moving docs out of /usr/src and
this is already starting to have some negative tech support aspects
which I didn't really count on - people who want to build the docs now
have to go (in an entirely undocumented fashion) build n ports first
before they can even build the docs, assuming that they've even
figured out that it's an entirely new collection to add to their
supfiles.  I wouldn't want to see the same thing happen to setup -
that kind of confusion is something I and many others run FreeBSD to
avoid, the other "mix it yourself" route being rather more of a Linux
thing.

> Question. What do you forsee ? Or what would be your wishes for
> the next year ? Without knowing the long term aims itīs difficult
> to decide whatīs right or wrong.

In -current?  I forsee multiple architectures, each with their own
toolchain support (and this is going to be *fun* - NOT :-) and I see
the make system changing substantially to make it more self-contained.
I also see a shift to ELF and possibly a large number of changes in
the way that distributions are built and maintained.

> Ok. Question ... Is TCL 8.x the TCL release that does the job
> right for you ? Could we all agree to try to fix the port collection
> for supporting this TCL version in -current once more ?

I've already offered my help in this regard. :)

> But then a question to Satoshi ... Could we hack the ports
> collection, that it supports -current again ?

If you mean in regard to TCL, this probably wouldn't be a big issue.
If you mean in general, then I can only refer you back to my previous
arguments as to why I think this is a recipe for eventual insanity. :)

					Jordan



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