Discussion on the future of floppies in 5.x and 6.x

[Paul Robinson]

Wes Peters wrote:

>So you'll be signing up to do the floppy release engineering, and to 
>modify the kernel so it can load the boot-device modules dynamically.  
>That's great news!
>
If the kernel changes don't support the established distribution format, 
the kernel changes are broken, not the distribution format. If the 
kernel changes must happen at some point and the distribution format 
must therefore become "the package", then that's fine, but that change 
(including being able to split packages over several physical 
distribution "units") has to happen first, surely? I'm happy to get 
involved in any team looking at that as it falls under something I've 
been looking at for the last year or so in my spare time - package 
management and installers.

>The dog isn't sleeping, it's dead.  Like everything else in FreeBSD, it 
>takes time.  If someone wants to donate that time, it'll continue getting 
>done, otherwise it'll fall by the wayside.
>

Understood. I just think saying "let's get rid of floppies" is shooting 
a dog that happens to be near to hand because you don't like that dog, 
to stretch the analogy. Personally, I think getting the package 
management issues sorted so that distribution becomes independent of 
physical medium (so floppies, CDs, etc. can be used or abondoned at 
will, along with future formats) is an admirable goal, but one that 
should be on the 6- roadmap. In other words, getting rid of floppies is 
not the discussion we should be having, if that makes sense?

-- 
Paul Robinson