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 think it's a good time to review how the update path works
> and fix it.

Again, I agree, provided that definition's broad enough to
include the communication channel. We've gotten notices of
potentially disruptive changes here in the past, and that's been
fine (even if the disruption is inconvenient for some). Without
that sort of communication, doing actual pulls from sources
(regardless of the technical mechanism used) seems dangerous.

Anthony