Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Eric Sandall" <eric AT sandall.us>]

Jack Bertram said:
> I've been following this discussion with a certain amount of vague alarm.
>
> My system works fine, thanks, with /devices and /dev separate.  I use
> /devices for most things but /dev when I need to sort some stuff out.
>
> I guess there's a fundamental dichotomy among users here: those who
> like/have the time to change their system around lots, and those who
> basically need it to keep on working.  We have this catered for at the
> grimoire level, but not at the sorcery/init.d/gcc level, because we're
> not a big enough team to do regular dot releases (and keep supporting
> older ones) changes like this proposed change come up every so often.
>
> If this change goes through, then I won't be able to take the risk
> of upgrading my system - I've had it broken by too many things before
> to do so.  So I'll end up becoming more and more incompatible with
> the default SMGL install, until I finally give up and reinstall.
>
> The shame is, though, that when I reinstall it'll be Debian rather
> than SMGL - I've now done source-based, and learned a lot from it,
> but the way it's done will force me out.  I've been in since the early
> days of Sorcerer, so it'll be a shame to go.  (In fact, I wonder if
> I hold the record for the longest-uptime SMGL box - 183 days was my
> record before an untimely long power cut)
>
> Please don't take this as a rant or a suggestion that you proceed in
> a different direction.  But I wonder how many users we're going to lose
> from making these kinds of changes.
>
> Cheers,
> jack

Jack,

This is meant to simplify the distro, not make it more complicated.  We're
working on getting the changeover to be as seamless and painless as
possible.  We're targeting to be on some update of your grimoire, it will
list init.d as needing to be updated, and if you choose to update /and/
(from my understanding) say that you want to use devfsd, it will change
your system over (mostly, it won't change your /etc/lilo.conf nor
/boot/grub/menu.lst or any other self-configured file) to use the new
system.

My main point (again, if I'm understanding correctly) is that you will
/not/ be forced to upgrade, you can keep your current layout.  Also,
future versions of packages/scripts will be made to be smart enough to
check if you are using devfsd or not.  If you choose to switch to devfsd,
one of the options is to make a symlink from /devices -> /dev, thus making
no other changes to your scripts/configurations necessary.

-sandalle

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Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us                  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/