From owner-freebsd-stable Fri Mar 20 16:39:29 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id QAA11411 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:39:29 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from freebie.dcfinc.com (freebie.dcfinc.com [138.113.2.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id QAA11397 for ; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:39:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from chad@freebie.dcfinc.com) Received: (from chad@localhost) by freebie.dcfinc.com (8.8.7/8.8.3a) id RAA27600 for stable@freebsd.org; Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:38:52 -0700 (MST) From: "Chad R. Larson" Message-Id: <199803210038.RAA27600@freebie.dcfinc.com> Subject: Re: after the release ... To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 17:38:51 -0700 (MST) In-Reply-To: from Ted Spradley at "Mar 20, 98 11:23:53 am" Reply-to: chad@dcfinc.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL22 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message