[ On Thursday, October 18, 2001 at 23:05:51 (-0400), James Chacon wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: stdio FILE extension
>
> That's rich..."To upgrade, wipe your disks and install everything fresh
> from the cd..Oh by the way some of your favorite utils might not be the
> same version anymore..Deal"

You clearly have not been reading what I've been writing (and I'm sure
it's been written clearly enough to make misunderstandings such as the
above impossible).

> What if I don't want them upgraded? What if I like foo 5.0.0 which I happen
> to have installed and the current pkgsrc version is 5.7.0 which isn't "quite"
> the same? By your logic I'm just SOL...

No, you're not SOL -- you can always still recompile the old release.

People who have chosen to use pkg[src] (and I mean just the release
"versions") have implicitly, if not even explicitly, agreed to upgrade
their packages when they upgrade their base systems.  If you don't think
that's true then I invite you to try installing a new (previously never
installed) package on a newly upgraded system, especially one that
happens to depend on newer versions of many already installed
"intermediate" packages.  The very use of third party shared libraries
in any part of the pkg system guarantees that upgrades must sweep across
the board.

People who don't want other people to decide which new versions of third
party software they will run should not be using pkg[src] (or maybe they
could request that old versions of their packages be maintained in new
releases of pkg[src], as some are apparently doing now).

> That's an awfully large asumption to rathole every possible user into. 

I'm not trying to pigeon hole _all_ users -- it's only the majority that
matter in this case.  No primarily volunteer driven project can even
begin to afford to cater to all the needs of all its users.  This very
discussion is a perfect case in point.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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