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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!olivea!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ai-lab!hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: mycroft@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Charles Hannum) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs Subject: Re: The patchkit (was Re: Excessive Interrupt Latencies) Message-ID: <1oh26m$qtb@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu> Date: 21 Mar 93 06:32:54 GMT References: <g89r4222.732307558@kudu> <C409MC.n1D@agora.rain.com> <1obts0$doq@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <1993Mar21.014401.2911@fcom.cc.utah.edu> Organization: dis Lines: 59 NNTP-Posting-Host: hal.ai.mit.edu You are seriously confused. You seem to think that patching order is an important problem, when in practice, it's pretty simple to have the patchkit check the order and issue errors or even offer to automatically install previous patches. Of course, CVS (RCS) pretty much automates this, albeit it in a bit different manner. In article <1993Mar21.014401.2911@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes: > > The intent of the header in each file is *precisely* to "screw up" > selective patching. I continue to think it was, and is, *stupid*. You harp on order of application of patches, but this is *trivial* to do right. First of all, there are very few conflicting patches in practice. Second of all, there is no reason each patch can't have a dependency list. AIX does this, and the dependencies are checked automatically when a new patch is about to be installed. They make other mistakes, but this, at least, they got right. (WRT AIX, we're talking about binary patches.) > You assume that there will be exactly one patch. I make no such assumption. > I think you do not appreciate the amount of effort involved in > providing the patchkit at it's current level. No, I *do* appreciate it, and I probably wouldn't even be using 386BSD were it not for the patchkit. However, it still *sucks*. >> b) Example time: If I'm a user who needs a working com driver, [...] Forget it. You obvious can't see the forest. > I still *strongly* disagree that a totally context-free patcher can > be produced; I believe there will always be installation order > dependencies. I would never be so stupid as to deny this; however, it is incredibly simple to deal with. > [Re: version numbering of base release] > This is *not* a problem to be addressed by Bill! This is a problem > to be addressed in the minds of the people who think all products > have an equal measure of progress between version numbers (ie: all > progress is quantized into internationally standardized units). That's a nice plateau, Terry, but it's pretty lonely up there. Most of us live in the real world, with real people. I, for one, can't change their minds on this issue. -- \ / Charles Hannum, mycroft@ai.mit.edu /\ \ PGP public key available on request. MIME, AMS, NextMail accepted. Scheme White heterosexual atheist male (WHAM) pride!