From owner-freebsd-current Mon Dec 18 07:34:06 1995 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id HAA01805 for current-outgoing; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 07:34:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from server.netcraft.co.uk (server.netcraft.co.uk [194.72.238.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id HAA01779 for ; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 07:33:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (from paul@localhost) by server.netcraft.co.uk (8.6.11/8.6.9) id PAA18935 for FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.org; Mon, 18 Dec 1995 15:33:20 GMT From: Paul Richards Message-Id: <199512181533.PAA18935@server.netcraft.co.uk> Subject: Re: FreeBSD-current-stable ??? To: FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD current mailing list) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 15:33:19 +0000 (GMT) In-Reply-To: <199512171731.JAA09419@freefall.freebsd.org> from "John Dyson" at Dec 17, 95 09:31:26 am Reply-to: paul@netcraft.co.uk X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Trimmed an out of controll CC line to just be -current. In reply to John Dyson who said > > A make world was not done, and if someone would donate a reasonable > machine to me to let me do so -- it would be very nice. I probably > have the least powerful machine of any major contributor (and have > only one.) Those with expensive high power machines are welcome to > help. (Machines bigger than a 3 yr old 20MB 486/66 :-)). > It's not *that* small. Geeze, remember when we started, I had a 4Mb 25Mhz 486 when we did 1.0, things have changed a lot in the last few years :-) > The kernel did work -- and there was some chaff (a bug in sys_process.c) > -- oh, by the way did the 1Tb changes break things -- or was it the header file > changes/improvements???? All I had to do to get ps working again was to > rebuild libkvm/ps.... The vm header file changes, I didn't think you were responsible for that, I was using the 1Tb changes as an example of something where I would expect the odd bug to slip through since simply checking it compiles and even running it for a while is not going to flush out every possible situation. This is exactly what -current IS for. Testing out totally new code to flush out those unexpected bugs. You do run current at a risk to your system since a filesystem or vm bug could be very nasty, that's the sacrifice you make. What I don't like to see though is a situation where the tree simply wouldn't compile. It wasn't even a simple oversight, it was damn clear no attempt had been made to compile the tree because a whole load of utils just plain simple wouldn't build because the vm header files had changed. There's just no excuse for that. If you don't have a machine that you're willing to run a make world on then don't play in areas that require a make world to validate them. I also disagree with Poul's suggestion that people go hack user-land code in 2.1 for 2 reasons. 1) You'd have to be pretty selective in what you did for it to seamlessly drop into -current since all sorts of fundamental things can change in -current, like header files, mk files, malloc, sysctl :-) etc. It's not really a good idea to tell people to go and work in 2.1 and really is just a cop out from addressing the real problem which is that -current is being hacked without any clear focus as to where it's headed. 2) It's *IMPORTANT* to have people actually running -current even if they're not actively developing. If only a tiny number of active developers are hacking -current then we'll never have enough of an user base for that branch to find all the bugs that crop up from diverse use. I've advocated having an actual plan of what features to bring in for a particular release in the past but -core always felt this was a restriction of volunteers freedom to give what they can when they can. I still think that for a single release there should be one or two main developments and that others should wait until the next release. Releases would happen more often that way so people wouldn't have to wait that long before it was their turn to bring in their idea. While they're waiting for their turn they could get it that much more polished and perhaps it would come into -current mostly working :-) -- Paul Richards, Netcraft Ltd. Internet: paul@netcraft.co.uk, http://www.netcraft.co.uk Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 1225 447500 (work)