From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 19 May 2014 17:34:24 EDT." <3A01CE35-B176-4A24-B3D4-24AB0874BB48@9srv.net> References: <92606a17ce255a2e74049e4090d948b3@proxima.alt.za> <36c5eca0f06e9acbe2fac19067f457d8@ladd.quanstro.net> <20140519195016.B21E6B827@mail.bitblocks.com> <3a6dcbf0845989d60e627ad4e5df4313@ladd.quanstro.net> <3A01CE35-B176-4A24-B3D4-24AB0874BB48@9srv.net> Date: Tue, 20 May 2014 10:05:59 -0700 From: Bakul Shah Message-Id: <20140520170559.ECB2BB832@mail.bitblocks.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] syscall 53 Topicbox-Message-UUID: ea257ac6-ead8-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Mon, 19 May 2014 17:34:24 EDT Anthony Sorace wrote: > > Ron wrote: > > > That said, the problems were due (IMHO) to a limitation in the > > update mechanism, not to the inclusion of a new system call. > > This is true depending on how you define "update mechanism". > A simple note from whoever made the decision to push the > change out to the effect of "hey, we're going to add a new > syscall, update your kernels before pulling new binaries" a > while before the push would have been sufficient. I never understood why binaries are pulled. Even on a lowly RPi it takes 4 minutes to build everything (half if you cut out gs). And the 386 binaries are useless on non-386 platforms! Why not just separate binary and source distributions? Then include a file in the source distribution to warn people about changes such as this one (or the one about 21bit unicode) and how to avoid painting yourself in a corner. The binary distr. should have a provision for *only* updating the kernel and insisting the user boots off of it before further updates can proceed. This is a solved problem; not exactly rocket science. The harder problem is the social one.