Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 17:44:52 -0400 From: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> To: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CVSUP and 5.2.1 RELEASE Message-ID: <p06110413bd1a01a5de01@[128.113.24.47]> In-Reply-To: <25787.1089753241@critter.freebsd.dk> References: <25787.1089753241@critter.freebsd.dk>
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At 11:14 PM +0200 7/13/04, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>In message <p06110411bd19eadd8741@[128.113.24.47]>, Garance A Drosihn writes:
>
>>"make world" performs a sequence of operations which are expressly
>>wrong. Why we have a WRONG target is a better question than how
>>much work it would be to change the documentation.
>
>This is news to me.
>I have been involved in FreeBSD since we created the ncvs repository
>ten years and two months ago and barring minor mistakes here and
>there "make world" has performed the correct sequence of operations
>since then.
You know as well as I do that this target is dangerous for a standard
upgrade of a system. In many places we recommend the order of:
make buildworld
make buildkernel
make installkernel
REBOOT AND TEST THE KERNEL
make installworld
"make world" only does buildworld and installworld. Yes, that is
sometimes the right thing to do -- for a FEW developers in a FEW
situations. And those developers could continue with their work
even if the target was called "zworld" instead of "world". But
MOST users are bringing their system from one-point-in-time to
some newer-point-in-time, and those users often find a few holes
in their feet if they use this target.
And when that happens, we chide them and call them various names,
all so a few developers can save an occasional keystroke. This
seems rather anti-social to me. I really don't see what is
gained by this. Not for the project as a whole, at least. Sure,
the twenty developers who regularly use this target get to feel
pretty special, but we keep claiming that FreeBSD has "perhaps
millions of users". If only a hundred users get their foot
blown off by this target, then I really think the project as a
whole would be better off if we simply renamed it.
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu
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