Re: RELENG_4_4

From: Peter C. Lai (sirmoo@cowbert.2y.net)
Date: 04/26/02 

Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 14:32:45 -0400
From: "Peter C. Lai" <sirmoo@cowbert.2y.net>
To: Drew Tomlinson <drew@mykitchentable.net>

I hope we don't bring up the whole binary patch subject again but
in case you aren't trying to be facetious, I would have to state that
4.4 -> 4.5 is a point release and therefore may be a significant change.
Just look at how long it takes to run mergemaster when
going from 4.4 -> 4.5 and 4.5 -> 4.5. Actually moving from 4.1.1 -> 4.5
is a pretty huge jump too but if you only rebuild world every couple of
years for production machines you only have 1 major downtime period instead
of many potential ones.

A point release can change many things. For example, 4.0 -> 4.1.1?
changed the way passwords were stored and look at how many issues
people had with that.

If patching didn't require rebuilding a large portion of the system,
then "patch" may be appropriate, but to production level machines,
current patching methods are effectively system upgrades, at least
with FreeBSD. At least we aren't talking PHP 4.1 -> 4.2 here :)

cheers :)

On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 09:12:42AM -0700, Drew Tomlinson wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Julian Elischer" <julian@elischer.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 7:32 PM
>
>
> [snip]
>
> > We will be moving those on 4.1.1 to 4.4 so that they are all at the
> same
> > level, but we cannot move them up to 4.5 or 4.8 or whatever for
> > at least another 18 months as they don't upgrade production systems
> more
> > than once on 2 years in general.
>
> Instead of calling it an "upgrade", call it a system "patch". It just
> so happens that the RELENG_4_5 "patch" will ensure that the OS is up to
> date on security issues and more! :)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Drew
>
>
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-- 
Peter C. Lai
University of Connecticut
Dept. of Residential Life | Programmer
Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology | Undergraduate Research Assistant
http://cowbert.2y.net/
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860.486.1899 (Lab)
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