From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Aug 30 13:25:58 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from winston.osd.bsdi.com (winston.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.27.229]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7ADB337B440 for ; Wed, 30 Aug 2000 13:25:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from winston.osd.bsdi.com (jkh@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by winston.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA87943; Wed, 30 Aug 2000 13:25:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@winston.osd.bsdi.com) To: Bill Fumerola Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: build tools as separate distribution In-Reply-To: Message from Bill Fumerola of "Wed, 30 Aug 2000 15:44:01 EDT." <20000830154401.R33771@jade.chc-chimes.com> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 13:25:43 -0700 Message-ID: <87939.967667143@winston.osd.bsdi.com> From: Jordan Hubbard Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Well, considering everytime everyone has an idea for sysinstall, the > shouts of "Wait! Something new and better that already addresses that > is already in the works!" ring loudly from Concord. I think that takes rather wide liberties in recounting what's actually been said from Concord or anywhere else for that matter. What I've said, and more times than I can count now, is that something new and better is NEEDED. More recently, I've also pointed out the existence of the libh project as one potential candidate for filling that need. I've also stated in some detail, at various times in the past, just what WAS needed to fix all of the historical shortcomings of our installation and package management system. None of that precludes someone from doing the actual work, far from it. I've been practically begging for that to happen for over 5 years now, and I have no illusions about BSDi riding in on a white horse to hire the people to do the job. I might have had some early on, but I quickly wised up on that score. > Someone offered to actually look into doing the work (or I think even > mentioned that he did the work) previously in the thread, so I was The problem with hacking on sysinstall, even for someone willing to do the work, is that it's an evil mess and most people underestimate the challenge when making such statements. This then leads to either nothing happening (which is comparatively harmless) or them making an even bigger hash out of it, something which leads to mystery-failures at release time. That's pretty embarassing and anything but harmless, especially to my sleep schedule. If it were properly designed and implemented, people could hack on it without breaking it so easily, but it's not. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message