Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:38:51 -0700 (MST) From: "Chad R. Larson" <chad@freebie.dcfinc.com> To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: after the release ... Message-ID: <199803210038.RAA27600@freebie.dcfinc.com> In-Reply-To: <E0yG5WL-0001KR-00@set.spradley.tmi.net> from Ted Spradley at "Mar 20, 98 11:23:53 am"
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Let me try to summarize what I think we've all been saying.
1) There are many FreeBSD machines in the field that do not have the
sources installed.
2) There are valid reasons for having a machine without the sources.
A) Not enough disk space.
B) It's a production machine, not a development machine. It is
perhaps unreasonable to expect every production machine to
dedicate some 300 MBytes of disk to keeping current.
3) It is difficult for a machine without sources to keep up with the
latest bug fixes, security enhancements and product upgrades, as the
current method of distributing them is via source patches.
4) There already exists a method of distributing (and documenting)
changes to a system in the package tools. In particular pkg_add,
pkg_info and pkg_remove.
It would seem all we need to do is define a standard for what an update
package should look like. I'd think it should have a as a prerequisite
the binaries to be replaced. The pre-install script should move the
affected binaries into some dedicated safe place so that a pkg_remove
could restore them.
-crl
--
Chad R. Larson (CRL22) Brother, can you paradigm?
602-953-1392 chad@dcfinc.com chad@anasazi.com larson1@home.com
DCF, Inc. - 14623 North 49th Place, Scottsdale, Arizona 85254
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