Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 17:01:27 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com> To: Benjamin Lutz <benlutz@datacomm.ch> Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: HEADSUP: INDEX[-5] files were removed from CVS. Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0411141649030.6593-100000@pancho> In-Reply-To: <200411141947.39918.benlutz@datacomm.ch>
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On Sun, 14 Nov 2004, Benjamin Lutz wrote: > Next time, can't you please give an advance warning (a HEADSUP > mail to the mailing lists is enough, but please do it a few days before > you change things). Also, an UPGRADING entry is a must. You're right, this should have been done, and I'm one of the people that should have raised that issue but didn't -- because I had tunnel vision over how long we had talked about doing this. It didn't even occur to me that it was a developer-only discussion. I'm sorry about that. > Granted, make fetchindex works, but how is that an improvement over > having the INDEX in CVS. 1. make fetchindex will get you an INDEX that is only a day or so old. Formerly, it was weeks or months old. (The fact that any of the tools actually allowed, e.g., port upgrades with one so out-of-date was more blind luck than anything else). 2. Having INDEX in CVS creates immense repository bloat, which has other side-effect (bandwidth load on the cvsup servers, for an example). If you look at the CVSweb page for INDEX and click on 'diff two versions', you'll see just how immense the diffs got. 3. One could argue that, philosophically, that anytime you check a database into a source control system, one is already doing something that is philosophically wrong -- you're using a tool for a purpose that it is not designed for and, at best, ill-suited for. > As for an always out of date INDEX - I'd rather have an INDEX file that I > know only gets updated every few weeks, but which works and which I don't > have to worry about. There is an INDEX tinderbox that is feeding 'make fetchindex'. It runs continually. AFAIK if the build breaks, INDEX is not updated -- and voluminous email is sent. This has helped reduce the time that INDEX stays broken from days to hours. So the idea of all this was to get away from 'INDEX file that works but is only updated occasionally' to 'INDEX file that works and is always up-to-date'. Perhaps only lofi really understood that this was not going to be as painless as the rest of us assumed. I'm not sure. mcl
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