[ On , December 12, 1999 at 15:19:18 (-0500), Perry E. Metzger wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: src/dist is a *bad* idea (was: New IP Filter v3.3.5 is now in the tree)
>
> That would make it hard to maintain portions of the tree that are
> externally developed. By doing it our way, it is simple and easy. If
> you want to contribute the cash for a non-volunteer to do things your
> way, feel free. Otherwise, we're sticking to doing it this way when it
> makes things simpler.

Ah, but that's where you are wrong and that was part of what I was
trying to explain.  It appears easier at first go, but eventually it
becomes a twisty little maze of passages all not quite alike.

As I said there's a big problem with using CVS on modules that are
vendor branched and locally branched from the trunk.  It not only cannot
do what it was designed to do (local conflict detection), but it also
gets in the way because local branches require all vendor revisions to
be pulled over to the trunk before a local branch is created.  If you
don't do this you'll eventually end up with a mess that's so completely
twisted that you'll want to just start over, but of course you can't
without breaking the ability to build old releases.

In fact it is doubly hard for users of the source tree to maintain their
own local patches to those same parts of the tree that are separated out
in this ugly fashion, even if we don't use the CVS repository.  I've
been fighting the issues caused by this mess in creating local releases
of both NetBSD and FreeBSD.  It's not a pretty sight, and what's
frustrating about it is that it cause unnecessary and repeated effort
for absolutely zero gain.  I.e. it really sucks big time for the actual
customers of the NetBSD source tree.

BTW, in volunteer organisations you do not ask for cash -- you ask for
more volunteers.  Oddly enough I think I've volunteered to fix this very
problem in the past already (though not on current-users)....

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
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