Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:12:40 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@acm.org> To: Daniel Gerzo <danger@FreeBSD.org> Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle Message-ID: <20120122071240.GB1913@server.vk2pj.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <4F1A0FD7.2020604@FreeBSD.org> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1112211415580.19710@kozubik.com> <4F153AE3.9010602@my.gd> <20120120133826.GB16676@FreeBSD.org> <4F196F9B.3050506@my.gd> <20120120135936.GC16676@FreeBSD.org> <CAOjFWZ41CJfHFL8GKH-DZ4MH-9hr7Z3tnCb5j_PR%2BHM7PUoeCw@mail.gmail.com> <4F1A0FD7.2020604@FreeBSD.org>
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--hHWLQfXTYDoKhP50 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 2012-Jan-21 02:07:35 +0100, Daniel Gerzo <danger@FreeBSD.org> wrote: >I have already said it in this thread - I believe we should consider=20 >issuing much more errata notices (i.e. -pX); with that I mean we should=20 >consider more bugs as "major bugs". I don't really see a reason why not.= =20 The problem is that one person's "major bug" is completely unimportant to another person. Increasing the number of errata notices would annoy just as many people as it would please. >And we should also provide some mechanism to allow for cherry-picking=20 >individual errata notices to be applied on the given release (e.g. p1,=20 >p2, p5, but not p3, p4). This is a nice idea and is something you might be able to do yourself (because the exact list of changes are in the errata notes) but I don't believe this is practical for the Project to support. Errata updates need to be lightweight from the Project's point of - it can't afford to spend months testing them. With the current model, p4 can only be applied on top of p3 so releasing p4 means: 1) verifying that applying the p4 changes to p3 corrects the bug(s) that caused p4 to be created. 2) doing regression tests to ensure that adding the p4 change to p3 doesn't break anything. With your model, someone can apply p4 on top of any combination of p0, p1, p2, p3 - 8 possibilities. This means there's now 8 times the effort involved in releasing the errata update and it increases exponentially with the number of errata. And it gets more complicated if more than one update affects the same (or related) areas of code. >I don't think it makes sense to issue errata notices for driver updates=20 >as in support for new devices because we don't ship installation media=20 >with these patches applied. I'm not sure that's really an issue - except for people who can't install because the updated driver is needed to support their install media. That said, driver updates can be problematic - someone who has a new chip that isn't supported by the current driver, or who is having a serious issue with the current driver will want the update. Someone who isn't having problems won't want to touch their driver in=20 case it introduces problems with their system. --=20 Peter Jeremy --hHWLQfXTYDoKhP50 Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk8btugACgkQ/opHv/APuIcPCwCgiTBtqjSsOn/n9Gv+Z4yP0zvo TEAAoMTjEKD0VD2gm3xvLEEMjp/uBxyj =QL5m -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --hHWLQfXTYDoKhP50--
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