Date: Mon, 22 Mar 1999 08:25:14 +0000 From: Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@phone.net> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Build of 3.1-STABLE failing? Message-ID: <199903220825.IAA00589@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 21 Mar 1999 15:07:08 PST." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903211445280.414-100000@guru.phone.net>
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> On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
>
> > Running stable is preferable than release. But the targets are
> > buildworld and installworld.
>
> If you make regular backups of userland, that represents quite a bit
> of work. Since it rebuilds everything in userland, you wind up dumping
> all of userland with every backup, so you need to do some kind of
> special backup after doing an installworld. Putting it all together,
> that's enough work that I wouldn't bother doing it except every 6-8
> weeks. But -RELEASE happens about twice that often. What's the point
> of tracking -STABLE under those conditions?
Set COPY to -C in /etc/make.conf.
> Of course, part of the reason for tracking -STABLE is I want
> up-to-date versions of various ports. After all, like most users, I
> have a computer so I can run the apps, not the OS. But here we're told
> that the ports tree and the OS are tied together - and you shouldn't
> try using newer versions of the ports without having the appropriate
> underlying OS. Given that /usr/ports was one of the reasons I chose
> FreeBSD, not being able to track that closely is a serious hit.
>
> This all points to one of the most serious problems with the current
> release system - that patches seem to be considered impossible. On
> commercial OS's, or Linux, you see small distributions that fix a few
> things in userland (a security hole in Sendmail being a typical
> example). Fixing that is a simple matter of installing that patch and
> restarting sendmail on the relevant systems (assuming the patch didn't
> do that for you). On the other hand, here I see a discussion of doing
> a "point release" instead of a patch. This means that fixing the
> problem requires reinstalling the OS for all those systems. Surely,
> anyone who runs more than a few systems doesn't do this?
AFAIK, FreeBSD is never going to start making these sort of patches.
It only leads to the linux ``Sendmail doesn't work ? Ahh, you need
to install patch 1.2.3 from some.domain, but I wouldn't do that
unless you've first installed patch 1.1 from some.other.place'', or
even worse, the Solaris scenario where you can install individual
patches or you can install jumbo ``recommended'' or ``y2000'' patches
where the patch set that these words represent changes monthly....
> Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, even ignoring the problem of
> needing to find extra time to do that work. The main reason for doing
> this is to see if anyone else has ideas for a solution.
Either use the -C install option as mentioned above or subscribe to
the commit lists and decide when you want to rebuild/install an
individual program.
You can then do a ``make world'' every six weeks or whatever.
> > > Just one question - what are "make" and "make install" for, then?
> >
> > For those who know what they are doing.
> > For instance, they can be very handy for developers who know what
> > their modifications are doing or not to the source tree.
>
> You mean - people who go in and edit the userland sources? Nuts -
> that's one of the reasons I *started* tracking -STABLE. I kept hoping
> the patches I submitted with pr bin/9429 would show up, as well as
> some of the ports I've done and submitted.
Right - if you've submitted changes, you'll know exactly what
knock-on effect they'll have on other parts of the system. You
therefore already know where to go before doing the makes (I mean
which directory ! ;)
> > At the very least, you should have tried "world" before asking the
> > question.
>
> True - it would have avoided a lot of flaming on the list.
>
> <mike
--
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org> <brian@FreeBSD.org> <brian@OpenBSD.org>
<http://www.Awfulhak.org>;
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !
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