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

[Brian Callahan]

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.

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.

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.

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