Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 15:17:35 -0700 From: Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org> To: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> Cc: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@starjuice.net>, Trish Lynch <trish@bsdunix.net>, arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 4.x compatibilty.. Was: MFC of rcNG? Message-ID: <3D0FB17F.6F8B5819@FreeBSD.org> References: <20681.1024423602@axl.seasidesoftware.co.za> <3D0F7AAA.110E0D8@FreeBSD.org> <20020618224029.I52976@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>
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Nik Clayton wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2002 at 11:23:38AM -0700, Doug Barton wrote: > > I would like to reiterate my previous points... namely that for the > > vast majority of users, this change will be almost unnoticed. > > Not so. At least, I hope not. At the very least, I look forward to > being able to tell people "Yes, you can stop/start/restart any service > with 'sh /etc/rc.d/<service>.sh stop|start|restart" Yeah, sorry... I was thinking about it from a different perspective. My point is that for most of our users, whose only contact with the rc* stuff that exists currently is twiddling rc.conf*, the change will be transparent. For those "medium to high" power/enterprise/commercial users who actually care about such things, there will be a learning curve. But (and I may be biased here) I think it's all curving in the right direction. > So, not only does the project's documentation have to change, but so > does all the internal documentation maintained by companies that are > using FreeBSD that describes how to do things to their FreeBSD systems. *Nod* But, in one sense my way makes things easier because it gives you a clean point of delimitation. "If you have a 5.x system, you do this. If you have a 4.x system, you do this." As opposed to any of the 4+ different combinations of ([45].x times rc[ng|old] times other variables) that I know I'd hate to write documentation for. :) > These changes take time to make. And throwing up yet another bar in the > adoption of 5.x is a *bad thing*. > > This is about to become a wider discussion that rc_ng. Ok, I agree with your premise (this is one more hurdle), but not your conclusions. I'll likely contribute to the new thread you're going to start, but briefly, my thought is that precisely because 5.x is going to be a major paradigm shift in so many other areas, we ought to get as much of the pain out of the way as early in the process as we can. I also don't think that putting the bar high is a bad thing. It'll help restrict the early adopters to people who are already highly motivated. The contrast to "5.x is too hard to migrate to." Is, "Every time I think I understand 5.x, they change something else! To hell with them!" I think the latter is MUCH more dangerous long term. Doug To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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