From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 6 17:32:55 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 372F716A4CE for ; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 17:32:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp4.server.rpi.edu (smtp4.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.4]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E00D543D2F for ; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 17:32:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp4.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i271Wpe0014396; Sat, 6 Mar 2004 20:32:51 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <404A1A69.9060207@bis.midco.net> References: <404A1A69.9060207@bis.midco.net> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 20:32:50 -0500 To: Peter Schultz , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) Subject: Re: Usability Of NOCLEAN X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 01:32:55 -0000 At 12:37 PM -0600 3/6/04, Peter Schultz wrote: >Hi, > >I'm just curious about the usability of NOCLEAN. If I've just >updated world and things are fine with the installation, is it >considered safe to use NOCLEAN? If we thought that behavior was always safe, then that would be the default behavior. It is not the default behavior, because it is not always safe... >A couple updates to libc came in this morning just after I >installed a fresh world and I'm wondering what others do in >cases like this. I rarely use NOCLEAN. If there *are* problems due to some junk being left around, then the time I will lose to debugging those problems is bound to be much larger than the amount I save by using NOCLEAN. (and I have run into such problems, back when I did make NOCLEAN builds much more often). The only times I use NOCLEAN is if something died in buildworld or installworld. If I can find the ONE update to fix that problem, then I'll fix it and use NOCLEAN to rebuild world. I do not cvsup for "all new updates", though. I only pick up the update(s) which fix the specific problem I'm seeing. It is very annoying to cvsup to pick up one fix, only to find out that you also picked up a *different* breakage... I doubt I would ever use NOCLEAN for updates to libc. My feeling is that if I don't have time to do a normal build, then I also won't have the time to deal with any problems that might come up from a NOCLEAN build. There is *always* another set of "interesting-looking" updates being committed to freebsd. If I have just finished a successful buildworld, then I almost always wait at least a week before I do another one. This is only describing my own habits, of course. Obviously there are many times when you *can* get away with a NOCLEAN build. It's one of those things which is very useful when you know what you're doing, but it isn't always safe to do. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu