/* From: Chris G Demetriou <Chris_G_Demetriou@UX2.SP.CS.CMU.EDU>
 *
 * > Then what the heck is a source distribution good for if you can't do
 * > source-only upgrades with it????
 *
 * Uh...

That's not encouraging... (BIG 8'D )

    (1) so you can make local changes and fix bugs more easily?

Okay, I'll buy this one.

    (2) so you can easily roll-forward your changes, via a good
        revision control system, to your source tree?

This one too.

 * In (2), you get the new (binary) release going, make the sources work
 * with your changes, then recompile and reinstall.  It's really Not That
 * Hard.

No, but if you have a slow link (getting to ftp.netbsd.org has been a bit
slow lately, even over a T1), it can be a long, arduous, occasionally
_frustrating_ procedure.  I'd like at least the option to import the new
sources, rebuild and reinstall that way.

 * Quite frankly, i've never even thought of doing "complete source"
 * upgrades from release to release as something that people do.

Surprise!  Quite frankly, I've thought that was the obvious route.

 * I've yet to see a vendor that supported it with their source
 * distributions.  Hell, many of those don't even build cleanly to begin
 * with.

Your point being...?

 * There's also the "bug reporting hell" problem: if a problem shows up in
 * the new system, whose fault is it?  there's no longer any common baseline
 * with which to compare...  (no, i don't really consider "foo + lots of
 * local changes" upgraded to "foo+1 + lots of local changes" to be
 * particularly representative of either "foo" or "foo+1".)

That's something to take into consideration, to be sure, though your last
statement confuses me a bit.

It may seem a bit simplistic, but I figure that if I'm running on hardware
which doesn't match the specs for which the software was written, and I
haven't even *tried* to get my mods -- or at least the concepts therein --
incorporated into the main source tree, it's hardly the fault of the OS that
my local mods no longer work.  That much should be obvious.

On the other hand, if I'm running stock (as in the distributed sparc port in
my case), there is NO REASON that I should _not_ be able to simply import
source (provided it isn't terribly far out of date WRT the last build) and
_cleanly_ rebuild my system, special instructions notwithstanding.  I don't
necessarily want to _have_ to depend on the efforts of someone outside to
provide binaries.

[That said, I'm not _knocking_ the binary snapshots which show
 up from time to time, since for me it's actually a lot easier to download
 them than it is to build from source.  But the day is coming when I would
 like to be _able_ to build from source without encountering a discontinuity
 in the life-graph of the binary/source world.]

 * cgd
 */

				--*greywolf;
--
Organized Religion (OR g@ nizd  re LIJ @n) n.  A "morally aligned" elite
consisting of people who want to change everyone else's world to be like
their own.  See "Wrong Answer, The".