Re: CVS commit: src

[David Holland <dholland-sourcechanges%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 08:43:31PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
 >> Retire softdep, pass 2. As discussed and later formally announced on the
 >> mailing lists.
 > 
 > Good thing nobody needs time to migrate or anything.

Since several people apparently don't understand this idea, I'd better
clarify: machines running -current and softdep will need to be
switched to wapbl. Doing so requires rebooting twice and is
furthermore a one-way trip; this is not something that should be
coupled with a kernel update, in case the new kernel turns out not to
work for unrelated reasons. Therefore doing the migration without
tripping on the various wapbl issues just fixed requires a kernel from
the window between ad's first commit and ad's second commit.

If this window were a couple weeks, as would be appropriate, it
wouldn't be a problem; one could update at a likely time, build and
test, migrate, fix any problems, and so on.

Since this window is a couple minutes, if the kernel from that window
turns out to be broken, one is hosed - one can use an earlier kernel
with broken wapbl, which might or might not cause problems, or use a
later kernel and hope nothing breaks, which with -current is a gamble.

The sense I'm getting appears to be that such caution is misplaced for
machines running -current (which is not true) or that everyone should
have abandoned softdeps ages ago (which is also not true, for reasons
that have been repeated ad nauseam) and I find this attitude troubling.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost