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 21:04:36 -0500
On 08/09/04 06:13, Edwin Groothuis wrote:
> Please have a look at
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/freebsd-versions.html
> , please have a look at /usr/include/sys/param.h and come back with
> patches if you still have problems.
> 
> This nonsense has gone on long enough. It will be better if you
> explain where my thinking went wrong in a constructive way instaed
> of this constant bickering like old women do. That way we all learn
> something from it.

Someone may have already answered this (I'm just coming off working 66 
hours in the past 80, so I'm a *bit* 
out_of_it/verging_on_hallucinations/etc.), but I think the biggest 
potential issue is the hard-coding of -CURRENT and -STABLE.  As these 
are moving targets, hard-coding them means continued maintenance of the 
FILE code is necessary with each new major release (even if it is 
required only once every couple years).  A programmatic solution that 
needed little or no maintenance would be preferred.

I sidestepped the issue by printing out the __FreeBSD_version string 
whenever I came across a development branch.  This still says "Hey, I'm 
not (based on) a release!" but doesn't need further maintenance and just 
happens to provide a little extra informative as well.

Thanks for working on FILE; I'm glad I'm not the only one who was tired 
of seeing "FreeBSD 5.0.2" with recent -CURRENT...

Jon
Received on Tue Aug 10 2004 - 00:04:39 UTC

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