Date: Sun, 03 Aug 1997 12:55:53 -0700 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Andreas Klemm <andreas@klemm.gtn.com> Cc: phk@FreeBSD.ORG, ports@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG, Satoshi Asami <asami@cs.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: Current is currently really a mess (was: Re: Tk/Tcl broken(?)) Message-ID: <3326.870638153@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 03 Aug 1997 20:17:31 %2B0200." <19970803201731.09375@klemm.gtn.com>
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> I think itīs not intended to make -current to a system, that > isnīt useable anymore for active developement work in the ports > area, or am I mistaken ??? You are mistaken. The first and foremost "mission" of -current is to work on new ideas and implement new mechanisms that specifically DO break backwards compatibility (otherwise we could just do the work in -release and not worry about it, right?). That's not to say that it's a goal unto itself to break such compatibility, but if you've got to do it (and this whole TCL thing is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I see for -current's future) then that's what -current is there for. It's a testing ground, not a place for hosting the ports collection. Perhaps we've lost sight of what the ports collection is there for also. I always envisioned it as that "extra 10%", like comfortable seats in your car or airbags in your dashboard. It makes the system much nicer to use and adds polish for the user base. Putting effort into support ports for -current has, however, always struck me as a case of trying to add a wet bar and hot tub to an experimental racing craft. What makes sense for a luxury yacht does NOT make sense for some prototype boat you're building just to test a new engine design. > In the past one of our goals was, to use -current as our playground > for new features, but as long as the system is still useable for the > other people using -current. You are mistaken again. The goal was to use -current as a playground for new features, period. "Usability" is a purely subjective term and not really applicable here, certainly not where ports is concerned. If -current even compiles on a given day then I'm pretty happy and I doubt that anyone here would be rewarded by expecting more from it. I hate to say it, but I have now seriously come to question whether or not you're the sort of person who should be running -current at all. I realize that you want to play with SMP, but I think that maybe you should have held off on that until it was ready for the non-developer types. Jordan
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