On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 11:47:56AM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: > On Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:18:14 -0400, Johnny Lam <jlam%pkgsrc.org@localhost> > wrote: > > > I'm curious as to how many people are using the pkgsrc "stable" branches > > (pkgsrc-YYYYQQ). The pkgsrc developers spend quite a bit of time > > creating and maintaining these branches, and I want to get a feel for > > whether this is time well-spent. > > > > I personally use the stable branch on production servers. I find it > > avoids the chaos of keeping up with rapidly changing PKGREVISIONs that > > happen on pkgsrc HEAD at times. I keep a sandbox handy for rebuilding > > packages when there is a security update on the stable branch, and I > > update all of my software to the newest stable branch every quarter. > > > > Is anyone else using the pkgsrc stable branch? If so, how do you use it? > > I'll tell you something you don't want to hear -- I tried it, but I gave > up. The problem is that security patches weren't pulled up quickly enough > to the branches. On stable machines, those are my primary reason for > recompiling. Fixing the PHP packages last week took me an insane amount of time; I'm glad that I can stretch my job description enough to consider it part of my admin job, but I still have better things to do. I committed the patches on Friday, and just did the pull-up request, after proper test that everything applied cleanly and compiled fine on the branch. During that time, *anybody* (well, policy probably requires that the requests come from developers, but that still include a lot of people) could have done the same checks and request the pull-up. I personally don't use the stable branch, mostly because I haven't had the time to prepare my setup in that respect. -- Quentin Garnier - cube%cubidou.net@localhost - cube%NetBSD.org@localhost "When I find the controls, I'll go where I like, I'll know where I want to be, but maybe for now I'll stay right here on a silent sea." KT Tunstall, Silent Sea, Eye to the Telescope, 2004.
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