pkg_add for 5.2.1 no longer working...

[Ion-Mihai Tetcu]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 06:25:01 +0000
"Darryl L. Miles" <darryl at netbauds.net> wrote:

> Kris Kennaway wrote:
> 
> >Right.  Since 5.2.1 is an obsolete release it was removed from the
> >main ftp site last year after the release of 5.3 to free up some
> >space.  Some mirrors may still carry it - look with
> >http://mirrorlist.freebsd.org and set the environment variables
> >described in the pkg_add(1) manpage to use the alternate site.
> >
> OBSOLETE!  I would understand you saying its not current, or not the 
> latest, but "obsolete" generally means the version has under gone its 
> complete lifecycle, it came out, was superceeded (5.3), then those last 
> installs of 5.2.1 would get their expected system lifetime to run (lets 
> say 3 years), only at this point would 5.2.1 become obsolete.  This has 
> allowed enough time for all systems to be upgraded from it.

You forget that 5.2.1 was a "technology preview" release and as such it
_is_ obsolete.

> There must be 1000's of systems out there running 5.2.1 right now and 
> these system (overnight) have already begun the rather steep slope into 
> unmaintainability.

Then, with some exceptions, there are 1000 systems with ..... admins.

> The main distribution point of freebsd has deleted a few Gb to recover 
> diskspace would the main site be best hosted at one of its mirrors ?
> 
> One huge advantage of binary distrubutions (of packages/ports) is that 
> it makes for easy administration.   Not only just to install the package 
> but if 99% of people will be using that same binary package (over 
> building it themselves), those 99% of people can use their advantage of 
> having that specific binary/build tested over a large userbase, use that 
> advantage to know how and if they are affected by security updates 
> relating to that build of the package (as any one of them can do the 
> audit and post results that have meaning to the other users of that 
> package), use that advantage to report on runtime problems relating to 
> that build of the package and so on.

And one uses all the flexibility and optimizations it can have.

> Free BSD's policy seems to read that once a new mainline release comes 
> out, users now have to start building their own binary ports for their 
> old version of Free BSD.  Free BSD will no longer provide or even keep 
> around the latest build of each package from the time when the 
> distribution version was current.  I don't expect any back porting of 
> even upgrading of packages after the version is no longer mainline, but 
> I would expect the frozen state from the point it was superceeded to 
> still be available.

Many things can be said about FreeBSD but no that we don't care about
backward compatibility and related things.

-- 
IOnut
Unregistered ;) FreeBSD "user"