This is no longer about Unison. Its about whose opinion counts when making integration decisions.
As per Plocher, this belongs on its own thread. If such a thread is created, I'd be happy to contribute. - jek3 Garrett D'Amore wrote: > Joseph Kowalski wrote: >> >> OK, I've gotten a couple of private messages about this. I was >> clearly unclear in what I said. >> >> My issue is that if this is "good enough" for the community (of Linux >> users), this is good enough to allow this to be integrated into >> Solaris. Sure, we have no idea how much this will bother Solaris >> users. Just the same, we have little idea about how much this >> already bothers Linux users. I am fairly sure that the pain (what >> ever it is) is about the same for both classes. >> >> I'll retract my statement that this is a P4 or P5 bug. Actually, its >> less than that, because it does conform to its specification, making >> this into an RFE. If this was a Sun funded project, we as the ARC >> would certainly question the decision to not support hardlinks. We >> might even add that as a TCR. However, this is the importation of >> FOSS. They already made the decision as to if hardlinks should be >> supported. We just have to live with that choice. >> >> We live in a different world than we are accustomed to living in. >> >> - jek3 > > Hang on a sec. I think what I'm hearing is that it is now OK to > accept architecturally inferior software into Solaris if it already > exists on Linux. (Note specifically that I'm not indicating anything > about how "widespread" its use is -- I don't think unison is in > widespread use... but I'm not really in a position to know.) > > The fundamental problem I have with that, is that when software that > is inferior (perhaps greatly so) is located in /usr/bin, the user has > *no* way to distinguish between "first class" software developed at > Sun's traditional quality standards, and various crapware that Sun has > just crammed into the distribution but which may have major flaws > which we "accept" because its "good enough for the Linux community". > The user who finds unison via "man -k" doesn't realize this > distinction, and assumes that the same level of support that comes > with other utilities (such as rsync or tar) comes with unison. > > Are we just abdicating all engineering responsibility here, so that > Solaris will ultimately become a mishmash of various bits of FOSS of > differing quality? I really hope not! > > unison as documented for this case, IMO, does *not* belong in any > default distribution of Solaris, but in some value add location where > folks who want it can get at it easily. I *really* believe that we > need to set some kind of precedent here defining what are appropriate > things to have in the core (and what are the quality and support > guarantees for such), versus what can go in some other ghetto repository. > > -- Garrett >
