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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