*BSD News Article 14531


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!uunet!psgrain!percy!agora!rgrimes
From: rgrimes@agora.rain.com (Rodney Grimes)
Subject: Re: What exactly is the idea behind etcdist?
Message-ID: <C5K4J9.F9F@agora.rain.com>
Organization: Open Communications Forum
References: <1993Apr14.024829.17151@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1993 03:33:09 GMT
Lines: 45

khushro@niagara.eecs.umich.edu (Khushro Shahookar) writes:

>Can someone please help me make some sense out of etcdist before I wade
>thru the
>whole thing?

>Why are some of teh things already in bindist repeated in etcdist?
>Are the etcdist tools superior?

The etcdist tools that duplicate what is in srcdist/bindist are normally
the GNU versions of these tools.

>For example what is the difference between /bin/dd and
>/usr/othersrc/public/fileutils-3.2/bin/dd?

/bin/dd is the Net/2 version of dd, /usr/othersrc.../dd is the GNU version
of dd.

>There is no man page for dd in bindist, but there is one in etcdist.
>The man pages for ln in bindist and etcdist are different (etcdist man page is
>twice as long)

There are lots of this type thing and it has to do with what Berkeley put
on the Net/2 release tape.  Why certain things like man pages for certain
utilities where omitted, when the source code was not is a mistry to me.

>Should I just go ahead and reinstall everything in etcdist regardless of
>whether
>it already exists? Should I overwrite the existing tools, or maintain
>the etcdist
>version in a separate directory, and forever worry about which one is in
>the user's path first? (same for different versions of man pages)

Your choice of what binaries to run is up to you.  I would NOT move the
source code from etcdist to /usr/src, as this will conflict with future
patchkit upgrades.  The parts of etcdist that are from Berkeley and really
belong in /usr/src are being revised and put in to /usr/src by the patchkit,
ie patchkit 0.2.3 contains a revised version of /usr/othersrc/share that is
installed as /usr/src/share.


-- 
Rod Grimes						rgrimes@agora.rain.com
386BSD patchkit coordinator			      Wish it paid real money!
Accurate Automation Company          All opinions belong to me and my company!