Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

> 
> 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.

Well for what its worth the change is optional, and defaults to 'no'
I dont think it makes that big of a difference either way, its just
most of us think that the /devices way of doing things is a bit silly,
and an artifact from sorcerer. I had intended to make this change as
gradual and gentle as possible, such that no one's system would
break. Hopefully that will remain the case...

I've gathered that the newer init.d stuff might pull through this time,
its no longer using sysvinit, but apparently a better system.

What i try to do is hold things I know are error prone or 'hot
topics' and keep software updating. Things like init.d I cast very
carefully. Obviously this isnt quite a 'fire and forget' system atm. So
you have to be prepared to babysit a few things sometimes.
> 
> 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.
> 

Im sorry to hear that. We (at least I) am trying to get things stable. The
tinderbox stuff for example will hopefully present more bugs from people
(like you) who need their systems to be left unattended and be updated.