On 11 1, John F. Woods wrote:
> always "get -current", you introduce them to Constant Upgrade Hell.)  With
> the snapshot-per-port scheme, each portmaster ends up being the primary
> support point simply because they're likely the only ones who know for sure

  Of course, that would be a Bad Thing.

> support point simply because they're likely the only ones who know for sure
> what went into each snapshot.  Any portmaster without the resources of a

  Not if a source snapshot goes along with each binary snapshot.

> snapshots per year.  Either that, or the answer will, again, be "get
> -current", in which case anyone who either doesn't want to compile their

  Or, better, "Get the next (or current) snapshot"--with no need for the
*enormous* (and rising with each new port) overhead of synchronous snapshots
from a carefully (but never adequately) debugged source tree, the effort
required to generate a snapshot for any given port should be quite modest
(some folks even do this on a daily basis now), and the time between them
should be small enough that when many users run into difficulty, they'll
be able to find existing updates that already fix their problems.  If not,
the source code for their issue of the snapshot would be available for
patching, just as that for a release is now.

> There are also other problems of practicality:  the tree is *often* broken
> for some ports and not others, so without a concerted effort by the core
> group you *can't* get simultaneous snapshots (and if the timing is solely

  That's precisely why I didn't suggest that--the idea is to have asynchronous,
not synchronous snapshots.

> this means that someone intending to put out a multi-architecture CD has to
> have a separate source tree for each architecture -- this is not the way to
> encourage companies to package NetBSD on CD.

  A disadvantage, to be sure--but then, I've never really understood the
intense need that a lot of people seem to have for having their OS's
distributed on CD.  It's seems so...static--guaranteed to be obsolete by
the time it's available--kind of like releases, actually, but with the
additional delay time incurred by burning and shipping CD's.