[nycbug-talk] Request for Review, Summary of FreeBSD src fetching problems

Marc Spitzer mspitzer at gmail.com
Thu Feb 14 18:28:20 EST 2013


On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Brian Callahan <bcallah at devio.us> wrote:

> On 2/14/2013 2:24 PM, Marc Spitzer wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Brett Wynkoop <nycbug at wynn.com
>> <mailto:nycbug at wynn.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     No Marc the odds are that I have systems I maintain at CUSTOMER-A
>>     CUSTOMER-B CUSTOMER-C, and now I have x86,AMD64 and ARM at my own
>> place
>>     as well as mixtures of those at clients.
>>
>>
>>     Nothing you mentioned excuses the bloat of svn being required for
>>     updates.
>>
>>     -Brett
>>
>>
>> The "bloat" of subversion is not required for updates, the "bloat" of
>> subversion is required once for building binary updates there is a
>> difference.  And the tools may have warts that I am not aware of, but
>> any real issues will be addressed in a reasonable time frame.
>>
>> And even if you have multiple clients there is nothing stopping you from
>> doing exactly what I said you could do and make an update server, not
>> a separate computer, for each of them on a small little box you take
>> around or use ssh tunnels to access back to your server.  See no
>> subversion needed on your production boxes, in fact no dev tool chain
>> needed on production boxes and every file installed has a checsum and
>> master copy stored elsewhere for audit/recovery purposes.
>>
>> marc
>>
>>
> I'm going to throw something out here, and feel free to disagree with me.
>
> Easy access to source, even if we grant that it is "silly in 2013" as has
> been stated before, is no excuse for no easy access to source.
>

How is source access not easy?  just install svn and you have it.  Is there
a hard step I am missing?


>
> There are many reasons one would want to have easy access to source. Some
> people want to learn, others may want to be able to quick reference things
> for projects (school/work/etc.), others still may enjoy being weekend
> tinkerers. Even more reasons exist for wanting easy access to source.
>
Some of those people who fit in the above paragraph today will go on to
> become devs tomorrow. Case in point, me. I went from a weekend tinkerer to
> a dev. It would have been nigh impossible if obsd didn't have an easy and
> well-documented way of getting all sources from a base install.
>

again install svn and done, ie cd /usr/ports/devel/subversion && make &&
make install is the hard way.  To be honest I have small hope of anyone
becoming a developer if svn is a show stopper.



>
> If even one person (/business/manufacturer/**whatever) skips out on fbsd
> because of this svn debacle, it should be considered a massive failure in
> the eyes of the project and the devs, because who knows - that one person
> could have gone on to become the next core team member.
>

one person is not a failure, let alone a debacle.  I think freebsd made the
right decision for freebsd from the available choices as I understand it.
 the community of freebsd devs made the decision for valid reasons as
believed by the people who get to decide and some people are not happy
about it and blowing it out of proportion, well ok life goes on.


>
> I get that I am and always will be on the outside of this, not being a
> fbsd person. But this is how I see it.
>
> FWIW, I'd take Brett's suggestion of a basesnap program and run with it.
> Fbsd should already have the infrastructure necessary to do this (I imagine
> it would be similar to "do whatever you do for portsnap in the ports dir,
> and do this for the base dir").
>
> ~Brian
>

to be honest I think that the binary updates are vastly superior to source
updates, I get check sums, reinstall/clone is faster and when build tools
show up in my web server I just may have a problem.

marc
-- 
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
--Albert Camus

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the
inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
-- Winston Churchill

Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense.
--John McCarthy
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