Subject: Re: Third party source [was re: airport codes.]
To: Andrew Brown <atatat@atatdot.net>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-misc
Date: 10/22/2000 11:06:27
On Sun, 22 Oct 2000, Andrew Brown wrote:

: >Since we don't have these two very important prerequisites, it's hard to get
: >anyone to agree on what should and shouldn't be in src.  My vent was more of
: >a plea, in far fewer words, "please stop pulling more stuff into basesrc and
: >work instead on making software granularity easier to live with."
: 
: i guess i'm in the "larger" camp (although i feel with the way that
: sounds -- certainly i'm not in *any* advocating something approaching
: the scale of linux where they install *anything* you might *ever*
: want), although i certainly see your points.

Well, think about this for a second:  The various Linux distributions aren't
actually integrating all those tools into their source trees; it's packaged
the same way all the third party packages are.

: re: cvs
: 
: cvs is something all the developers use, and i think it makes sense to
: integrate that because (a) all the developers will and (b) it makes it
: easier for budding developers to start playing around.

Again, if it's in a package that you can select from a menu for installing
or upgrading, what difference does it make if it's in basesrc or pkgsrc?  
(See the prerequisites list at top.)

: re: /usr/share/misc
: 
: the issue here seems to be with the continued existence/maintenance of
: (afaict) ten files:
: 
:     airport
:     birthtoken
:     bsd-family-tree
:     country
:     domains
:     flowers
:     inter.phone
:     language
:     na.phone
:     zipcodes
: 
: which are the only ones that i can see that are (a) not used directly
: by *anything* in the base distribution and (b) requiring maintenance.

Yes, though the maintenance cost isn't inherently that high, provided a
method is established for updating them.  The airport codes and zipcodes,
for instance, are well maintained in other lists, and simple scripts could
auto-generate them.

(CVS, on the other hand, requires importing, modifying Makefiles, and adding
lots of time to a basesrc build.)

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  http://www.wasabisystems.com/
-- Speed, stability, security, and support.  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.