[ On Thursday, April 29, 1999 at 10:56:52 (-0700), Dustin Sallings wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: CVSup collections for a NetBSD CVS tree
>
> 	I think there's a big difference between, ``Not Invented Here,''
> and ``Doesn't Work Here.''  FUD does not apply either, we're certain
> there's no modula-3 port to many of these platforms, and we don't doubt it
> will be painful doing the port to every single platform.  All the other
> suggestions are known to be ported to the other platforms.  I have no
> doubt this might be faster after having read some of these posts, but the
> fastest application in the world isn't useful if you can't run it.

I was using NIH to refer to all the comments people were making about
re-inventing something "more appropriate for NetBSD", and to refer to
all those people who wanted to write it in C because they didn't want to
try to use the language it's written in already for whatever reasons.

I also wasn't talking about FUD over the fact that M3 doesn't run on all
NetBSD plaforms, but rather the apparent FUD some people seem to have
for CVSup, perhaps because they don't understand it, or perhaps because
they don't like M3, or perhaps because they're afraid it will detract
from some mechanism that they can understand, like, and/or use.

If you can't use CVSup for one reason or another then you can't, but
that doesn't mean others can't or shouldn't.  I.e. just because one
person can't use it doesn't mean everyone must be prevented from using
it.  This would be ludicrous!  There are already many examples of
programs in pkgsrc that don't work on all architectures -- should we
eliminate them all and make all users suffer just because a few must
suffer now?  I run sun3s, sparcs, and alphas as well as my recently
acquired i386 machines and it always seems that the sun3, sparc, and
alpha ports and packages are at least one step behind the i386.  I don't
let this slow me down though.

There's really no difference at all between a package that doesn't work
on all platforms, and a having a cvsup.netbsd.org server that not all
users can make use of.  Both require some resources, effort and
maintenance on the part of those users who can make use of them, and
that's about it.

If you *want* to use CVSup, but don't have a platform on which it works,
then that's an entirely different problem, and one that has at least
three obvious solutions:  1) scrounge up a junk PC (or other machine
which will run it already); 2) port M3 and CVSup to your existing
machine(s); or 3) convince someone else to port M3 and CVSup to your
platform.

If you don't want to use CVSup, then just get out of the way.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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