Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1998 09:42:16 +1100 (EST) From: "Daniel O'Callaghan" <danny@panda.hilink.com.au> To: gkshenaut@ucdavis.edu Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: after the release ... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.980321093437.300D-100000@panda.hilink.com.au> In-Reply-To: <199803201901.LAA03383@myrtle1.bogs.org>
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On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, Greg Shenaut wrote: > > Has anyone seen the BSDI approach to post-release patches? Once a > problem has been fixed, the code to fix it is rolled up into an > executable file, generally a perl script, which contains a brief >..... > carefully targeted, stand-alone, ASCII, self-documenting files > which can be used to fix bugs in a released system. They are not > used for enhancements or other "upgrade"-like system modifications. The pkg system can be used here. pkgs record their own installation event, they have pre and post installation scripts which can display docs etc. > The assumptions would be that (1) all of the patches would adhere > to certain semantic conventions; (2) each patch could assume that > assume that a specified set of earlier patches had been applied; Patches with dependencies could check for those. > (3) all patches are relative to a specific (i.e., the most recent > previous) RELEASE version (so that they are relative to a fixed, > not a moving, target). All patches would be ASCII, but the particular Since pkg_add will handle URLs for .tgz files, and *most* FreeBSD systems which would be upgraded like this have some relationship to the Internet, even if it is only by sneakernet, I think pkg format is appropriate. > Who would develop the patches? I would say that given a reasonably > well-defined set of conventions, the developer should be able to > create a patch corresponding to whatever changes he or she developed > with very little extra work. So what we want is a Makefile which will make an update patch, so the committer can create this new patch. We might end up with a lot of these, though. Perhaps it would be better to have a patchmeister (did I hear you volunteer, Drew? :-)) who could collect the patch-package creation requests and release an upgrade package every so often. > What about security? This is an *excellent* point. It's a bit risky PGP signature. /* Daniel O'Callaghan */ /* HiLink Internet <http://www.hilink.com.au/>; danny@hilink.com.au */ /* FreeBSD - works hard, plays hard... danny@freebsd.org */ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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