🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <bahx024m26XB01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> paf@uts.amdahl.com (Paul A. Fronberg) writes:
>
>One is that the patches may not be posted in a commonly read newsgroup.

Quite true, and a royal pain as well!  

>I claim that all offical patches should be issued through the moderated source
>group that the program was originally posted. This would allow easier
>administration of fixes and put them in a known group.

This is an idea that has alot of merit.  While it would result  in  some
inconvienence,  in  that  the  patch  would  have  to  pass  through the
moderator resulting in some delay reaching the end user of the  program,
it  would  introduce  some  degree  of  consistency  into the posting of
patches.

What would be nice would be to use  the  original  volume  name  of  the
posted  program  with  the  patch  level appended to it, eg.  v18015-p1,
although any standard catologing scheme would do just as well.

And it would also be nice if their was a companion "patch" newsgroup for
each   of   the   newsgroups   to   which   sources   are   posted,  eg.
"comp.sources.unix.p" or something similar.

I would have suggested that "official" patches be  posted  to  the  same
newsgroup  as  to  which  the  original was posted but that might not be
possible, wise or too much of an additional burden on the moderators  of
these groups.

In summary, the advantages to posting patches to a  moderated  newsgroup
are  consistency  of  format,  and absence of "chatter" in the newsgroup
which in turn would allow archive sites to process these postings  in  a
more efficient manner.

The disadvantages are increased time for the posting to reach the end
user. 

I'm  sure  that  others  will  point   out   other   advantages   and/or
disadvantages, but what do you expect on only one cup of coffee.  B-)

I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say about the  subject,
is   the   idea  worth  further  investigation  and  possible  call  for
discussion.

>The second problem is that with certain critical programs (news, patch) it
>probably makes sense, at some point, to do a repost with all the patches
>applied.
>
>Perhaps certain programs should be periodically posted once a quarter or once a
>year just to ensure that the community has up to date versions.

With the above approach, it would probably not be  necessary  to  repost
"critical" programs except for major upgrades and new releases.

Noel


-- 
Noel B. Del More             |                             decvax!ubbs-nh!noel
17 Meredith Drive            |                             noel@ubbs-nh.mv.com 
Nashua, New Hampshire  03063 | It's unix me son!  `taint spozed tah make cents