Re: [head tinderbox] failure on arm/arm

> Message: 11
> Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 23:34:58 +0800
> From: Doug Brewer <brewer.doug_at_gmail.com>
> To: Adrian Chadd <adrian_at_freebsd.org>
> Cc: arm_at_freebsd.org, FreeBSD Tinderbox <tinderbox_at_freebsd.org>,
> 	current_at_freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: [head tinderbox] failure on arm/arm
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAG0V13TpALMdPG-8rifcjjROXZ948mQzjnn1YvqZ4TEyBJz5vQ_at_mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> No offence, but how many times did you break the build? Could you please
> compile your code before committing next time? Thanks a lot!
> 

Just an observation: a few years ago when I got sick of Linux's "headlong rush" development model, I subscribed to various BSD mailing lists to see what else was out there. I considered FreeBSD at the time - there was a neverending avalanche of "[head tinderbox] failure" messages. This told me that I would be more likely to be running code written by people who knew what they were doing if I went with Open, Net, or DragonflyBSD. 

I safely run OpenBSD-current on my main computer and it always works (I think I have had 2-3 build problems in about 3 years, and they were all my fault). At the moment, I only feel confident enough with FreeBSD-current to run it on my unimportant torrent computer. This is 80% due to constant build failures, and 20% due to invasive changes being introduced with documentation/instructions scattered over many different pages and mailing lists, e.g:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/FrontPage?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=xorg&titlesearch=Titles

http://wiki.freebsd.org/FrontPage?action=fullsearch&context=180&value=pkgng&titlesearch=Titles

Hypothetical user: "Is it WITHOUT_PKGNG= or WITHOUT_PKGNG=yes or WITH_PKGNG=no today?"

I wonder how many other people that you never hear from feel the same, and if some sort of "x weeks commit freezeout" should apply to the build breakers. Cute pointy hats or whatever obviously have no effect.

Rant over!