Subject: Re: New NetBSD Guide chapter: Obtaining the sources
To: Rui Paulo <>
From: Greg Troxel <>
List: netbsd-docs
Date: 08/09/2005 09:03:03
  That's explained in the tarballs section.

Sure - I meant, as others commented, that the 'preferred way' from the
project POV might be for people to grab tarballs and then update from
there.  If so, that should probably be first.

  Well, I don't see how can that csh examples be bad. Get someone to change
  the default user shell on NetBSD and I promise you I'll change the whole
  guide. ;)

fair enough

  | In particular, I object to setting CVSROOT (and
  | prohibit it within my research group) since when using multiple
  | repositories it is often wrong.  So I'd say:
  |   cvs -d co src
  | because once checked out, there is no need to have CVSROOT set.

  No one is saying the oposite. Setting CVSROOT is only to avoid
  typing the same in all the examples... do you really want to do that?

I believe that it's bad practice to set CVSROOT in the environment,
and thus don't ever want to tell anyone to do it.

  | In general, I would omit prompts so that text from the guide can be
  | cut/pasted into a shell.

  That's not a common all over the guide. How do you expect a user to
  detect a set of commands easily (by eye) without a prompt ?

If only commands are given, without showing output, then it's easy,
but I see your point, and I agree that this is a guide-wide issue and
thus not appropriate to discuss in this context.

  By stable I mean x.y.z_STABLE or x.y_STABLE.

Sure - I was making a language nit that 2.0_STABLE is a stable
version, and that netbsd-2 is the cvs _branch_ tag bfor 2.0_STABLE, so
that it's odd to refer to stable version of netbsd-2.

  | This advice is problematic, since it can lead to people using the
  | next, not yet debugged branch while the old is still active.  But
  | given pkgsrc resources, it's probably 98% good advice.

  Please explain yourelf. What do you mean by "next, not yet debugged branch" ?

Right now 2005Q2 is current, which means that it is subject to pullups
and thought to basically work ok.  2005Q1 is no longer maintained.  In
September, a base tag 2005Q3-base and a branch tag 2005Q3 will be
created.  Then, pkgsrc folks will do bulk builds and fix problems on
the branch.  At some point the branch will be declared 'released'
(this is all kind of fuzzy), at which point 2005Q2 will no longer be
maintained.  This declaration of '2005Q3 is the current pkgsrc stable
branch' is really what should cause someone to choose that instead of
the previous one.  After tagging but before the branch has been shaken
out it's not the right thing for users wanting stability.  But, to
keep security issues up to date, they have to jump to the new branch
the day it is released, since maintenance on the old one stops
immediately.  Thus, it might be just as well to jump on the new one as
soon as it is branched.  Plus, given the freeze and branch, maybe the
stabilization period is pre-branch.  So I'd say don't worry.

  Isn't that a bit of out-of-scope for the NetBSD guide ? I mean, normally,
  only developers, companies using/developing NetBSD and mirrors need
  to do that. Documentation/mirror.html explains a bit of each.

fair enough

  I think that's the idea. Anyway, you probaly only need the $CVSROOT, since
  you can checkout "CVSROOT" and see the modules file or go to

yes, but I generally find that harder than reading an expert's concise
take on what you want and why.  The guide chapter seems quite good.