Re: glibc-2.8 tarballs?

["Marc - A. Dahlhaus" <mad at wol dot de>]

Ulrich Drepper wrote:
> Tarballs are a completely outdated concept.

<rebelface>
Yeah, all the world does it that way, let's do it otherwise...
</rebelface> (just kidding...)

> I've said multiple times that I won't waste my time on them.
> Tarballs are static. If I would have made a 2.8 tarballs then I
> shortly afterwards would have had to made 2.8.1 and perhaps more.
> There are always going to be changes.

I don't get the "waste of time" argument at all here...

Maybe i should throw in the words "release process automation".
Makefiles can do all the stuff needed to prepare a tarball release for
you. For that purpose svn have the ability to run a so called hookscript
for you on the very moment your tag hits the repository that could do
all the stuff needed and even upload the files to gnu.org. Don't know if
something similar is possible for cvs.

Another point here is redundancy, not only in bandwith but also in the
case that some crazy captian thinks his anchor should meet up the next
best deepsea cable for a ronde vouz. You get worldwide backups for free
there and your repository is less likely to be overwhelmed by the
attention it gets from every john doe out there. Last but not least even
large enterprises refuse to route traffic to cvs port out of there
networks.

In the end i don't think it is realy a waste of time given the nice gifts
you get for that. I think we don't get a problem out of the way here,
it's rather the opposite.

> That's what appropriately-tagged branches in CVS are for. You take the
> latest version of the release branch and you know you have the version
> which you are intended to use.

I think we all know that the latest and greatest stuff is always where
the developers put it to. And that we should use the latest release
available, but cvs is a "development space" where thnings break quite
often. How can we be shure that branch xyz is in a shape where we can pull
it and have a working system?

By the way there are no snapshots of the 2.8 branch.

Maybe glibc needs a gnome who is willing to build the gnu.org tarballs
or contribute patches to get a "make tarballs" out of a cvs tree up and
running but i think it's to early for a christmas present this time.

The above text in no way was meant to be rude, i'm not a native writer
of the english language, i apologize. I just wanted to show that the
downsides outweigh the upsides given that the boring commands to pack and
upload this monster to gnu.org could be automated.


Marc <http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&p=thMx..&search=apologize>