Re: CVS removal from the base

On 12/3/2011 5:03 AM, sthaug_at_nethelp.no wrote:
>>> The fact that we have so many people who are radically
>>> change-averse, no matter how rational the change; is a bug, not a
>>> feature.
>>> 
>>> This particular bug is complicated dramatically by the fact that
>>> the majority view seems to lean heavily towards "If I use it, it
>>> must be the default and/or in the base" rather than seeing ports
>>> as part of the overall operating SYSTEM.
> 
> I don't think of myself as change-averse. I've been using FreeBSD 
> since 1996, and there have been lots of changes since that time. But 
> two of the most important reasons I still use FreeBSD are:
> 
> - Stability: Both in the sense of "stays up basically forever", and
> in the sense of "changes to interfaces and commands are carefully
> thought through and not applied indiscriminately". For instance, I
> like very much the fact that the ifconfig command can configure VLANs
> etc - while Linux has introduced new commands to do this.

Agreed.

> - The base system is a *system* and comes with most of what I need,
> for instance tcpdump and BIND. For me the fact that I don't need to
> install lots of packages to have a usable system is a *good* thing.

So 2 things here that I really wish people would think about.

1. If you're using *any* ports/packages then you're already
participating in the larger operating *system* that I described, so
installing a few more won't hurt. (Seriously, it won't.)

2. In (the very few) areas where integration of 3rd party apps into the
base makes sense, no problem. But at this point the fact that a lot of
3rd party stuff is changing more rapidly than it used to, and often in
incompatible ways and/or at incompatible schedules with our release
process, means that we have to re-think how we do this.

You mentioned BIND, which is a great example of 2. above. I'll have more
to say about this soon, but my plan is to remove it from the base for
10.x because the current situation is unmanageable.

The FOSS world has changed a lot in the last 20 years, and decisions
that were made in the early days, while appropriate at the time, need to
be reexamined.

> I use CVS (or rather csup) to keep the base system up to date. 

The point has been made before, but you do realize that cvs and csup are
2 completely different things, and that noone is recommending removal of
csup from the base, right?


Doug

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