Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 22 Mar 1999 08:25:14 +0000
From:      Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org>
To:        Mike Meyer <mwm@phone.net>
Cc:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Build of 3.1-STABLE failing? 
Message-ID:  <199903220825.IAA00589@keep.lan.Awfulhak.org>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 21 Mar 1999 15:07:08 PST." <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903211445280.414-100000@guru.phone.net> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> On Sun, 21 Mar 1999, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> 
> > Running stable is preferable than release. But the targets are
> > buildworld and installworld.
> 
> If you make regular backups of userland, that represents quite a bit
> of work. Since it rebuilds everything in userland, you wind up dumping
> all of userland with every backup, so you need to do some kind of
> special backup after doing an installworld. Putting it all together,
> that's enough work that I wouldn't bother doing it except every 6-8
> weeks. But -RELEASE happens about twice that often. What's the point
> of tracking -STABLE under those conditions?

Set COPY to -C in /etc/make.conf.

> Of course, part of the reason for tracking -STABLE is I want
> up-to-date versions of various ports. After all, like most users, I
> have a computer so I can run the apps, not the OS. But here we're told
> that the ports tree and the OS are tied together - and you shouldn't
> try using newer versions of the ports without having the appropriate
> underlying OS. Given that /usr/ports was one of the reasons I chose
> FreeBSD, not being able to track that closely is a serious hit.
> 
> This all points to one of the most serious problems with the current
> release system - that patches seem to be considered impossible. On
> commercial OS's, or Linux, you see small distributions that fix a few
> things in userland (a security hole in Sendmail being a typical
> example). Fixing that is a simple matter of installing that patch and
> restarting sendmail on the relevant systems (assuming the patch didn't
> do that for you). On the other hand, here I see a discussion of doing
> a "point release" instead of a patch. This means that fixing the
> problem requires reinstalling the OS for all those systems. Surely,
> anyone who runs more than a few systems doesn't do this?

AFAIK, FreeBSD is never going to start making these sort of patches.  
It only leads to the linux ``Sendmail doesn't work ?  Ahh, you need 
to install patch 1.2.3 from some.domain, but I wouldn't do that 
unless you've first installed patch 1.1 from some.other.place'', or 
even worse, the Solaris scenario where you can install individual 
patches or you can install jumbo ``recommended'' or ``y2000'' patches 
where the patch set that these words represent changes monthly....

> Unfortunately, I don't have a solution, even ignoring the problem of
> needing to find extra time to do that work. The main reason for doing
> this is to see if anyone else has ideas for a solution.

Either use the -C install option as mentioned above or subscribe to 
the commit lists and decide when you want to rebuild/install an 
individual program.

You can then do a ``make world'' every six weeks or whatever.

> > > Just one question - what are "make" and "make install" for, then?
> > 
> > For those who know what they are doing.
> > For instance, they can be very handy for developers who know what
> > their modifications are doing or not to the source tree.
> 
> You mean - people who go in and edit the userland sources? Nuts -
> that's one of the reasons I *started* tracking -STABLE. I kept hoping
> the patches I submitted with pr bin/9429 would show up, as well as
> some of the ports I've done and submitted.

Right - if you've submitted changes, you'll know exactly what 
knock-on effect they'll have on other parts of the system.  You 
therefore already know where to go before doing the makes (I mean 
which directory ! ;)

> > At the very least, you should have tried "world" before asking the
> > question.
> 
> True - it would have avoided a lot of flaming on the list.
> 
> 	<mike

-- 
Brian <brian@Awfulhak.org> <brian@FreeBSD.org> <brian@OpenBSD.org>
      <http://www.Awfulhak.org>;
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199903220825.IAA00589>