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Date:      Tue, 2 Mar 1999 16:34:39 -0700 (MST)
From:      Brett Taylor <brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu>
To:        Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
Cc:        Bill Fumerola <billf@chc-chimes.com>, Adam Turoff <aturoff@isinet.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: bsd vs. linux and NT chart
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903021622530.19678-100000@peloton.physics.montana.edu>
In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990302161355.00ad66b0@localhost>

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Hi,

> And you know why so few people use those "upgrade kits?" It's because
> they're buried in an obscure portion of the Web site with precious few
> pointers to them. The software should take the user to the right place
> and/or install them as a dependency.

Let's see... go to http://www.freebsd.org/ports/.  Near the top in the
text it says, and I quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The ports listed on these web pages are continually being updated.
Consequently, you may need to update a few files on your FreeBSD system to
make use of ports developed after your version of FreeBSD was released.
Please install one of the following depending on the release you are
running. Also, if you are running FreeBSD-stable or FreeBSD-current that
is more than a few days old, you are recommended to install an appropriate
upgrade kit as well; the ports system is changing very fast at times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now if you use CVSup to follow the ports tree you will get the correct
*.mk files.  You won't if you grab individual ports.  And having the
upgrade kit does nothing to make ports difficult to compile for a.out
easier now that we've switched to ELF.

> As for the switch to ELF: yes, it makes maintaining ports a little
> trickier, but if we want to keep loyal users it is inappropriate to
> make this THEIR problem just because they are (wisely) being
> conservative about upgrading to a very different version.

I won't argue what the core team has decided.  The move to ELF is required
if you want to keep up w/ the Linux world which you desperately seem to
want.  Go read the archives to find out why.

That said I see you maintain no ports at all

(http://www.freebsd.org/~fenner/portsurvey/maintainers.html) 

and yet you think it's possible to keep up 2 very different kinds of ports
trees - one for a.out and one for ELF STABLE.  It's hard enough
maintaining it for one tree as it is - don't think so?  Go check the
number of open PRs.  As more and more ports get added (2100 now) that
workload increases.  We're a volunteer effort and as Greg Sutter said in a
different email, sacrifices have to be made to get the best overall
quality.  To keep the ports tree as good as it is requires that we not
keep a 2.2.* up to date.

***********************************************************
Brett Taylor            brett@peloton.physics.montana.edu *
                        brett@daemonnews.org              *
							  *
			http://www.daemonnews.org/        *
***********************************************************



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