Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 21:49:51 +0200 From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commercial vendors registry Message-ID: <19970414214951.ZM17956@uriah.heep.sax.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.95.970414000227.6395B-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>; from Alex Belits on Apr 14, 1997 01:34:35 -0700 References: <199704140653.BAA00534@dyson.iquest.net> <Pine.LNX.3.95.970414000227.6395B-100000@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>
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As Alex Belits wrote: > distribution vendors. Sorry to mention it, I have yet to see Linux > distribution that had xterm using wtmp format from one version and the > rest of system from another. It's been an accident that FreeBSD 2.2.0 shipped with the wrong X11 for some time, but accidents happen, don't they? This has been fixed. I've also got a confirming mumble in the XFree86 group that Linux once had the same problem internally when extending their utmp structure. The mere reason for these problems is that things like libutil are barely usable or often missing in particular in the commercial systems, thus xterm is hacking its own of them. If libutil would have provided a consistent and usable interface in the first place (see the inconsistencies between login(3) and logout(3)), the utmp structure would have been opaque to the application. We aren't living in an ideal world however. (And note, IIRC, Linux's libc recently added the functions of BSD's libutil, too, resulting out of our experience.) > > Actually, I find alot of #ifdef FreeBSD and configure's that work directly > > with FreeBSD. Much software works directly out of the box directly from > > the vendor/developer. > > Then why "port" it? Because you haven't understood the idea behind the ports collection yet. Go and read the handbook. A port is not necessarily a wild collection of patches, but ideally doesn't contain a patch at all (about 1/10th of our current ports doesn't have patches, and a good number only patches things like config files, or the Makefile definition to activate the FreeBSD option). Instead, the most important part of a port is the package files that allow to keep track of the installed packages, and the Makefile that concentrates all information about this port (where to find the original source, whether it's using imake, GNU autoconf etc.). > Yes -- if you want to always keep up with OS development. Some people > like that, but most of them prefer to have something stable and do minimal > upgrades for functionality/security fixes, hardware changes and major OS > improvements. Yep, that's why there will be other 2.2.x releases, for sure. > > Or a bunch of distributions with a bunch of different > > combinations of shared libs and apps (and kernel versions, Linux)? > > Linux is more tolerant to versions changes of components because its > design assumes that things should remain compatible. Interesting. The struct utmp changes weren't causing half the hassles to the users as Linux's a.out -> ELF move (and we all know how `compatible' this move was for the users), so what are you whining about? Both changes were necessary at some point. Btw., the struct utmp changes are not part of any FreeBSD release yet. Thus, if you're affected by them, except of the mentioned accident above, you must be running -current. If you're running -current, you are expected to be a developer, not a mere user. If you are a developer, you are expected to have at least enough knowledge to handle rebuilding some parts of the system. I still don't get your whining. It took me a few hours to convert my system to the new wtmp format by that time (and there was enough of warning before), it probably took me longer to write the converter tool for the wtmp formats mentioned below (which i mainly did as a service to the users). There's a tool to help moving your old wtmp files. When the time is ready to think about a 3.0-RELEASE, we must finally have found the time to also think about better upgrade solutions than we are currently offering. Part of this will be the offer to also convert the old wtmp files. Maybe the utmp handling will change again until then (which could be rational since the existing utmp file is still a large pile of crap, with its hardcoded table slots). But still, only developers should be affected until then. > And all distributions that I know, update > kernel/libraries simultaneously. You mean all FreeBSD distributions? Yes, they do. Hmm, well, there's only one? Na, still, this one does. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)
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