Re: upgrade of file(1) to 4.10 (including FreeBSD elf(5) fixes)

From: Jon Noack <noackjr_at_alumni.rice.edu>
Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:50:17 -0500
On 08/09/04 05:02, David O'Brien wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 07:59:14AM -0500, Jon Noack wrote:
>> Here's the output of my patch:
>> http://www.noacks.org/freebsd/output.txt
> 
> This output is mostly OK -- but I would drop the __FreeBSD_version.  I
> can't see how knowing that helps anyone.  If it is insisted on keeping
> it, it should be printed out consistently for *all* __FreeBSD_verions,
> not just some.

My reasoning here was the following:
1) Now that we have a fairly consistent versioning scheme for releases, 
we can avoid printing the version string in those cases.  This preserves 
previous behavior and highlights at a glance what is (or is based on) 
"released" code.
2) Anything else is (or is based on) a development branch; I've found it 
highly useful on several occasions to know the version string to see if 
something was out of sync with the world.  For example, some vendors 
have binary-only products that stop working in -CURRENT.  Checking the 
version string and UPDATING is an easy way to see *at a high level* what 
the problem may be.  This is not likely to be a problem with "released" 
code.

Despite that, I will go with the consensus on printing the version 
string.  I really don't know much about all this (thus, the "high level" 
comment) and was merely trying to improve a tool I found useful.  If 
there's something better, I'm all ears.

Jon
Received on Mon Aug 09 2004 - 23:50:22 UTC

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