[openbeos] Re: Updating OSes bit by bit


AFA source based patching - like I said - this is a distro related issue. I don't personally have any plans to build a system that does source based patching. Be didn't and I don't see that it is a huge win. That isn't to say that SOMEONE can't. It just isn't me, nor will I assign it to someone.

did not intend to demand it anyways. just have been my two cents ;=)

AFA testing - I never said that testing is a complete replacement for patching or that we all write perfect code. As Dijkstra once said, testing can't show the absence of bugs.

OMFG... and how i know him... came across this guy at least once in my studies ^_^

But did you ever notice that BeOS needed a lot fewer patches than other operating systems?

don't kill me for this but... if the system has not much software, there's not much to make faulty. i mean with this only that if you bloat beos with all the software linux or even windows has there might be a little bit different image. it would still be much less than the other systems due to the coding schemata but still 'Size does matter' ^_^

Testing can reduce the number of patches. So can betas. By the time the OS hits "real" end users, it should be of such quality that you shouldn't need to install half a gig of patches to make it work. Look at the patches that Linux (stable branch) has. Most of them are tiny, obscure security holes that are issues only for servers. That is the level of quality that I hope for. That functionality works and that if there are issues, they have to be exploited explicitly and deliberately. That most of the bugs that are found are cases where we can fix it in the next release in good conscience.

yeah... somehow. i donno how you feel this but in my eyes linux still has a lot of patching going on, but more under the hood where more LFS oriented people (or distro maintainers) see it due to the daily handling of sources. but still better than M$. had already a couple of cases where i even had to mess a bit around in the kernel sources to do something (not much stuff... some simple silly errors that only occur in certain ./configure-ations) and there i've been hell glad i could dig down into the sources myself to wrap things up for my personal need. but i would never burden this on a user not knowing c++ coding out of the box ^_^

Roland

Other related posts: