Sender: Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be
Message-ID: <358F8B1E.44F3@rug.ac.be>
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 13:01:50 +0200
From: Vik Heyndrickx <Vik DOT Heyndrickx AT rug DOT ac DOT be>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
CC: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: [fdonahoe AT wilkes1 DOT wilkes DOT edu: Patch Level in /v2gnu]
References: <Pine DOT SUN DOT 3 DOT 91 DOT 980623130924 DOT 15446B-100000 AT is>
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Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 23 Jun 1998, Vik Heyndrickx wrote:
> 
> > I also suggested that archive files that are the first build remain in
> > their current format. After all, most archives have only 1 build.
> 
> If anything, the file with no patchlevel in the name should point to the
> *latest* build (possibly using a symlink).  Otherwise, naive users will
> inadvertently get buggy versions.

Does using symlinks yield some mirroring problems on simtelnet? I really
don't know, but since the /.alphas mirroring problems I wouldn't be
surprised. DJ?
And I can imagine that there are naive users that download the plain
file *and* the symlinked archive file, so... back to square one.
 
> But I seriously don't think it's a good idea to keep more than a single
> build of the same version.  

Neither do I, but the whole point is that we need something different
than the date/time to distinguish between re-releases without breaking
the gnu version number equivalences.

Be honest, consider yourself a naive user (try hard, I know that may be
difficult ;-) and you see in the directory listing:
  bnu291_b.zip
  bnu291_b-rebuild1.zip
What file would you choose (you might have the opportunity to see the
file size and date).

That is under the assumption that bnu291_b.zip was preserved, but in
general I think removing it immediately would be better. And if the
docs/faq say that you have to download bnu?????.zip even a naive user
will know that it has to be bnu291b_-rebuild1.zip when bnu291_b.zip is
not present.

Another solution is to rename the older rebuilds, so that bnu291_b.zip
is the youngest release.
e.g.
  bnu291_b-outdated1.zip       ; the original build (originally named
bnu291_b.zip)
  bnu291_b-outdated2.zip       ; the second build (originally named
bnu291_b.zip)
  bnu291_b.zip                 ; the current release

Of course the outdated releases can be removed if that would be
appropriate.

-- 
 \ Vik /-_-_-_-_-_-_/
  \___/ Heyndrickx /
   \ /-_-_-_-_-_-_/  Knight in the Order of the Unsigned Types