Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!news.kei.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!agate!news.ucdavis.edu!not-for-mail From: obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu (David E. O'Brien) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD Followup-To: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy Date: 5 Dec 1995 08:42:03 GMT Organization: University of California, Davis Lines: 59 Distribution: comp Message-ID: <4a10kr$k06@mark.ucdavis.edu> References: <489kuu$rbo@pelican.cs.ucla.edu> <49smvs$8gd@josie.abo.fi> <49tban$978@times.tfs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: toadflax.cs.ucdavis.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 950824BETA PL0] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:30128 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:10326 comp.unix.advocacy:12121 In article <49smvs$8gd@josie.abo.fi>, Mats Andtbacka <mandtbac@abo.fi> wrote: >on ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux/PEOPLE/Linus/v1.$VERSION >where $VERSION is in [0-3]; 3, at the moment. New patches come out >whenever Linus releases them, which can be daily to biweekly. > [...] > >Am I correct to think that the FreeBSD "equivalent", this CVS or >whatever you called it, can't be _read_ except by a small core team? >Whatever for? Keeping people from making their own changes and writing >to it I can see, but...? I believe what we have here is basically a misunderstanding (or total lack of knowledge of source code revision control systems). I guess it only makes sense since so many Linux and *BSD users have never programmed in a commercial environment (especially one working to DoD stds). I would highly suggest doing a man on `SCCS', `RCS', or `CVS' on your favorite Unix box. If you get no hits, try another. Or ftp RCS from prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/rcs* and read the paper written about it. A code revision system simply tracks the *CHANGES* to the source code. This allows you to get a copy of that file/system foo looked like last Tuesday. This could be useful to see how a file changed, or to go back to an older version of a file because you make changes that were bad. Often fixing one problems creates another. So it useful to see what has changed from system X to system Y when something worked in X, but is now broken in/for Y. These are the reasons for using SCCS/RCS/CVS. As stated so many times, the *latest* source is always available for *BSD, just like for Linux. EXCEPT, that for *BSD it is one-stop-shopping. For Linux I would have to visit WAY too many ftp sites for my tastes. To reiterate, the reason having a Core team is show below. This is a post to the Lcc compiler mail list from a Linux user. (lcc is a conforming ANSI-C compiler available in source form and has a text book written about it). ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: FYI linux lcc > In short, I feel that there are two things about ``LINUX: The Operating > System'' that will forever prevent it from truly becoming a Big Success > (i.e. bigger than it is now among innumerable hobbyists), and these two > things are both tightly interrelated: > > 1) The lack of a central authority for the entire OS, and > > 2) the lack of any single party who is concerned about (and who > takes personal/corporate responsibility for) the level of > standard conformance (both ANSI and POSIX) for the entire OS. [..stuff deleted..] > tape operations. Grrrr. I did however find a number of man pages which > had dangling ``SEE ALSO'' pointers which pointed off to other relevant > man pages that didn't exist on my system. Again, this is an example of > a _global_ problem with ``LINUX: The OS''... one which I might be willing > to help solve if only I could identify a single authoritative maintainer > for the entire set of Linux man pages. :-( -- David (obrien@cs.ucdavis.edu)