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Date:      Wed, 09 Oct 2002 14:00:26 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        "Danny J. Zerkel" <dzerkel@columbus.rr.com>
Cc:        "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com>, FreeBSD-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Do we still need portmap(8)?
Message-ID:  <3DA498EA.C7BF77A@mindspring.com>
References:  <3DA1F203.6CD50B5C@mindspring.com> <20021007233346.GB1408@hades.hell.gr> <20021007.190527.83978649.imp@bsdimp.com> <200210072127.58523.dzerkel@columbus.rr.com>

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"Danny J. Zerkel" wrote:
> And a list of files to delete would have saved many emails about the
> GCC being broken when the old headers just needed to be deleted.

No, it wouldn't.

The same people who failed to read the mailing list, and see the
first time the problem came up, and was solved, would fail to read
the file.  The information was available after the first time the
problem was successfully and publically addressed.

I challenge you to contact everyone who has posted complaining
about the "stale header file problem" in the last 6 months, and
ask them what resources they looked to for a solution, before
they contacted the mailing list.

I will be incredibly surprised if you find that they have any
single "README" or other file in common, where such information
could have been placed.

If you *do* find such a file, then you should create a patch, so
that there will be no more postings of the question by users as
they run into it.


The reasons volunteers automate processes are (1) "for their own
use", (2) "to advocate something", or (3) "to get other people to
shut up".

The reasons the topic of automating this process keep coming up
are the same; I would say that 90% of the people involved in the
discussion (including myself) are in camp #3.

Yes, it would be nice if this were automatic, but not if it screws
up the ability to run perl scripts (as one example).


If you want to address it systematically, then what you can do
*right now* is cause a file containing a build identifier to be
installed as part of the "install world" or "install from CDROM"
process that will allow the current system to be recreated.

A delta management system is only as good as the timestamp from
which the deltas are managed, relative to the current timestamp.

Personally, I suggest a file "/etc/BUILD" be created to contain
the CVS tag and a timestamp indicating the checkout time, created
as part of the build process (maybe the tag from the output of a
"CVS stat" on the Makefile in /usr/src, processed to deal with
sticky tags, and the date stamp on the file itself, otherwise).

Everything else can be hung off that.

-- Terry

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