Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:50:17 -0500 From: Jon Noack <noackjr@alumni.rice.edu> To: obrien@freebsd.org Cc: Oliver Eikemeier <eikemeier@fillmore-labs.com> Subject: Re: upgrade of file(1) to 4.10 (including FreeBSD elf(5) fixes) Message-ID: <411829D9.9040509@alumni.rice.edu> In-Reply-To: <20040809100244.GA17314@hub.freebsd.org> References: <B6D45422-E47D-11D8-9C56-00039312D914@fillmore-labs.com> <410E3AA2.4030800@alumni.rice.edu> <20040809100244.GA17314@hub.freebsd.org>
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On 08/09/04 05:02, David O'Brien wrote: > On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 07:59:14AM -0500, Jon Noack wrote: >> Here's the output of my patch: >> http://www.noacks.org/freebsd/output.txt > > This output is mostly OK -- but I would drop the __FreeBSD_version. I > can't see how knowing that helps anyone. If it is insisted on keeping > it, it should be printed out consistently for *all* __FreeBSD_verions, > not just some. My reasoning here was the following: 1) Now that we have a fairly consistent versioning scheme for releases, we can avoid printing the version string in those cases. This preserves previous behavior and highlights at a glance what is (or is based on) "released" code. 2) Anything else is (or is based on) a development branch; I've found it highly useful on several occasions to know the version string to see if something was out of sync with the world. For example, some vendors have binary-only products that stop working in -CURRENT. Checking the version string and UPDATING is an easy way to see *at a high level* what the problem may be. This is not likely to be a problem with "released" code. Despite that, I will go with the consensus on printing the version string. I really don't know much about all this (thus, the "high level" comment) and was merely trying to improve a tool I found useful. If there's something better, I'm all ears. Jon
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