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Date: Wed, 6 Nov 1996 06:21:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Gene Stark <gene@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu>
Message-Id: <199611061121.GAA20346@starkhome.cs.sunysb.edu>
To: David Greenman <root@implode.root.com>
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, jkh@freefall.FreeBSD.org
In-reply-to: David Greenman's message of Wed, 06 Nov 1996 00:20:41 -0800
Subject: SUP on sup.freebsd.org
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David Greenman wrote:

>point the service will be discontinued completely. So please switch to
>using CVSup. It has much lighter network load and is quite a bit faster
>as well.
>   Thanks, and sorry for the short notice, but the load problem had reached
>critical and something had to be done immediately.

I can well sympathize with the need to do something about your network
load problems, but I just tried (unsuccessfully) to build CVSup and I have
the following *major* complaints, which I hope you will consider:

	(1)  CVSup, being written in Modula3, requires the importation
		of a *GIANT*, *BLOATED* language subsystem, which is not
		currently a standard part of FreeBSD (nor should it be).

		As it happens, I have a Modula3 already installed on some
		systems we are using for educational purposes.  However,
		where I want to sup from is a server system that students
		don't use, and I'm not thrilled about copying vast quantities
		of shared libraries and other cruft yet to be determined
		over to that system so that I can run this one Modula3 program
		on the server.

	(2)  CVSup will not compile (at least not out of the box from
		the ports/net/cvsup directory on FreeBSD 2.1.5, due to it
		apparently wanting some "-lz" option from ld, which doesn't
		seem to exist on the 2.1.5 ld.  This effectively cuts off
		anyone running 2.1.5/stable from tracking the FreeBSD source
		tree and ports via sup.

Given the above problems, it's no surprise that people have not flocked
in droves to CVSup.

							- Gene Stark