From owner-freebsd-advocacy Thu May 13 17:12: 7 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from smtp1.vnet.net (smtp1.vnet.net [166.82.1.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C822414EAF for ; Thu, 13 May 1999 17:12:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rivers@dignus.com) Received: from dignus.com (ponds.vnet.net [166.82.177.48]) by smtp1.vnet.net (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id UAA27394; Thu, 13 May 1999 20:12:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from lakes.dignus.com (lakes.dignus.com [10.0.0.3]) by dignus.com (8.9.2/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA04516; Thu, 13 May 1999 20:12:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from rivers@localhost) by lakes.dignus.com (8.9.2/8.6.9) id UAA44965; Thu, 13 May 1999 20:11:59 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 20:11:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Thomas David Rivers Message-Id: <199905140011.UAA44965@lakes.dignus.com> To: advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG, jesus.monroy@usa.net, rivers@dignus.com Subject: Re: [Re: BUDS Coming to you soon.] In-Reply-To: <19990513235527.25447.qmail@www0g.netaddress.usa.net> Sender: owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > That makes for a *lot* (2 to the 313) of different kernels which will > > > take quite some time to compile... (longer than your lifetime?) > > > > > Perhaps a more realistic testing paradigm should be employed? > > > > I'm open to suggestions. But I think I will have > normal lifetime. :-) Uh.. I don't think you quite grasp what I'm saying... While I wish you a robust health and have no thoughts about your life expectancy, I don't believe you could complete this task in a normal lifetime. I don't believe you could complete this task in the amount of time equivalent to the age of the universe... it's a *lot* of time! 2 to the 313th power is a *very* *big* number... (hmm.... I wonder how much paper would be required to print it out; do we have that many trees in the world? If we consider all the trees ever grown on the planet, is that enough? What if we made the font *really* small :-) ) And, I'd daresay that by the time you did try and build each permutation, there'd be quite a few more added :-) Adding just one more config option *doubles* the amount of tests you have to do... (so, you went from impossible in the amount of time left in the universe to two times that, with just *one* option.) Testing is a laudable goal... but permutation testing often can't be accomplished. Perhaps you should simply try and determine, say, the top 20 hardware configuarations and test the kernel configuarations that match those. You might be able to expand that number to, say, the top 100, etc... - Dave Rivers - To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message