Date: Fri, 05 Jul 2002 15:33:08 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> Cc: Paul Richards <paul@freebsd-services.com>, Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@starjuice.net>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Removing perl in make world Message-ID: <3D261EA4.ABC3AEC@mindspring.com> References: <1025862341.1573.40.camel@lobster.originative.co.uk> <20020705095258.GC775@starjuice.net> <1025864161.1573.45.camel@lobster.originative.co.uk> <p05111730b94b6a140d74@[128.113.24.47]>
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Garance A Drosihn wrote: > While I agree there should be some automatic way to get rid > of old cruft (or at least to list it), I do not think that it > should be part of installworld or installkernel. All that > any such step can do is find things which "it does not expect" > to be there, but it would have no way of knowing *why* the > file is there. Maybe it's stale, *or* maybe someone build the > port and explicitly pointed it at /usr instead of /usr/local. So, to summarize: o People with old cruft may have working -current systems that should not be working, but they can't see the problems because they have files that would not be there if they had done a fresh install. o People with old cruft may be reporting broken -current experiences (e.g. like some of the libc_r breakage recently), when *their personal system* is what is broken, because they have files that would not be there if they had done a fresh install. o Making "make install" remove "everything which is not -current" is a bad idea, because it could surprise people by moving them from the first category -- "should not be working" -- into the "not working" category. Just to play devil's advocate... Aren't the people who would be "surprised" in this case using -current in a way it is not intended to be used? Specifically, isn't -current there *solely* for testing, and not production work, and therefore shouldn't the *primary* purpose of -current -- testing for breakage in -current -- be the first and foremost result of running -current? -- I think that there are two contradictory assumptions in this dicussion... either you want -current to work because it's good code, or you want -current to "just work", and you don't care if that doesn't mean that you can't build an identical, working system from the code in the source repository. Paul: I think the flaw in your idea is that when the source code goes from a working to a non-working condition, there would be no going back to correct the problem, short of a full reinstall or an emergency recovery disk. Others: I think the flaw in your idea is that you aren't really running -current, so why the heck aren't you just running -stable, instead of pretending to run -current? I think it comes down to this: Everyone is interested in having the most people possible running -current. Paul wants to attract new people, and Sheldon wants to not scare away old people. So back to my original suggestion (to Paul) of compromise: | I guess the best way for you to argue for this outcome is for | you to do the bsd.*.mk modifications to support your idea, and | to do all the Makfile modifications to provide the targets, | and to have it "off by default". E.g. with a "make installpristine" or some other target. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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