From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 17 03:13:37 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id DAA05318 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 17 May 1996 03:13:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from DATAPLEX.NET (SHARK.DATAPLEX.NET [199.183.109.241]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA05308 for ; Fri, 17 May 1996 03:13:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from 199.183.109.242 by DATAPLEX.NET with SMTP (MailShare 1.0fc5); Fri, 17 May 1996 05:13:22 -0600 Message-ID: Date: 17 May 1996 05:13:10 -0500 From: "Richard Wackerbarth" Subject: Re(2): Standard Shipping Containers - A Proposal for Distributing FreeBSD To: "hackers@FreeBSD.org" , "Michael Smith" X-Mailer: Mail*Link PT/Internet 1.6.0 Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > All this discussion is telling us is that there are several different ways > by which FreeBSD source code is distributed, and each of these > different ways works well for different people. Agreed. > What's wrong with things as they are? Why should anyone feel compelled to change things if they're not broken? They are broken! And I don't want to have to keep repeating the generation of patches to fix them. It is analogous to having a port of something (say gcc) and no way to get your modifications folded back into the author's release. Every time he comes out with a new release, someone has to generate a new set of patches. Here is what's broken: 1) For the new sup user to get started, sup has to download the entire source tree, even though the user already has most of it from the tarball or the CD. 2) For the ctm user.the same is true of the tarball. Things are better from the 2.1.0 CD. However, our staff (I get stuck with it) will have to generate a separate starter file for use with the 2.1.1 CD. 3) The ctm user has to maintain a complete history set of ctm updates in order to restore a damaged tree. He cannot use sup for this purpose. 4) The whole process of setting up a new user is too confusing even if they RTFM. It would become much easier to describe the process if we eliminate the exceptions. -- ...computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1/2 tons. -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949