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Date:      Wed, 24 Jan 2001 15:47:59 -0500
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <jruigrok@via-net-works.nl>
Cc:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>, Archie Cobbs <archie@dellroad.org>, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/contrib/tcpdump print-smb.c
Message-ID:  <p05010400b694e81fa8ba@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <20010124202607.A1455@lucifer.bart.nl>
References:  <XFMail.010123221817.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <p05010402b694bfca2ece@[128.113.24.161]> <20010124202607.A1455@lucifer.bart.nl>

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At 8:26 PM +0100 1/24/01, Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven wrote:
>-On [20010124 19:30], Garance A Drosihn (drosih@rpi.edu) wrote:
>>Now, back to this thread.  Archie fixed a BUG.  A BUG.  That
>>is not a typo on a man page.  It is not a spelling correction.
>>IT IS A BUG.  If I am using tcpdump to look at SMB packets, I
>>would much prefer to SEE THE CORRECT OUTPUT than to worry about
>>a little cvs bloat.
>
>Somehow I am going to regret this, but they say wisdom comes to
>those who try, fail/succeed and learn from their trying.

>To refer to your, in my reading, rather harsh statement above
>Garance, this bug has been present since [...]

Note that I was replying to one message (of several) which
did explicitly talk about "repository bloat".  That message
explicitly repeated the entire entry from the FAQ.

I will admit that I prefer to talk bluntly and explicitly,
and that will sometimes come off as being harsh.  It is not
meant to be harsh, it is meant to focus a discussion.  Archie
was not making a typo or a trivial spelling correction, and
therefore we should focus the discussion on what he WAS doing.

IMO.

>And another aside, if Archie would've consulted with the other
>developers or directly with David or me we could've advised him
>to merely import this as a patch on along on the vendor branch,
>causing less problems for us all.

This, I think, is the crux of the matter.  If there is a better
way to apply fixes to contributed source, then we should do that.

For instance, in my continuing effort to be both blunt and yet
helpful, perhaps we should change that same FAQ entry to say
something like:

    "If some vendor's source does have real bugs, then we
     should by all means fix them.  However, some ways of
     applying those fixes cause much less trouble than other
     ways.  Please check with other freebsd developers for
     the best way to apply bug fixes to a given package
     in the contrib source tree."

If there is a better way for Archie to get his bug fix in,
and in BOTH -current and (after a week or two) to -stable,
then let us get Archie to that method to address the bug.
But let's talk about it as fixing a bug, and not as Archie
being inconsiderate about repository bloat.
-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu


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