Re: CVSUP and 5.2.1 RELEASE

At 11:14 PM +0200 7/13/04, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>In message <p06110411bd19eadd8741_at_[128.113.24.47]>, Garance A Drosihn writes:
>
>>"make world" performs a sequence of operations which are expressly
>>wrong.  Why we have a WRONG target is a better question than how
>>much work it would be to change the documentation.
>
>This is news to me.

>I have been involved in FreeBSD since we created the ncvs repository
>ten years and two months ago and barring minor mistakes here and
>there "make world" has performed the correct sequence of operations
>since then.

You know as well as I do that this target is dangerous for a standard
upgrade of a system.  In many places we recommend the order of:
       make buildworld
       make buildkernel
       make installkernel
            REBOOT AND TEST THE KERNEL
       make installworld

"make world" only does buildworld and installworld.  Yes, that is
sometimes the right thing to do -- for a FEW developers in a FEW
situations.  And those developers could continue with their work
even if the target was called "zworld" instead of "world".  But
MOST users are bringing their system from one-point-in-time to
some newer-point-in-time, and those users often find a few holes
in their feet if they use this target.

And when that happens, we chide them and call them various names,
all so a few developers can save an occasional keystroke.  This
seems rather anti-social to me.  I really don't see what is
gained by this.  Not for the project as a whole, at least.  Sure,
the twenty developers who regularly use this target get to feel
pretty special, but we keep claiming that FreeBSD has "perhaps
millions of users".  If only a hundred users get their foot
blown off by this target, then I really think the project as a
whole would be better off if we simply renamed it.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad_at_gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad_at_freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih_at_rpi.edu