🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan8.064622.22598@nwnexus.WA.COM> markmc@halcyon.com (Mark McWiggins) writes:
>This would get us back to the Good Old Days before the horrors of C News
>installation:
>
>	cp config.mysys config.data
>	make world install
>
>And happy InterNetNewsing forever after.

Ah yes, just like in all the fairy tales.

You've forgotten all those fun aspects of the Bad Old Days like:
"Help, please send me a config that *works* under SlugOS 4.1.3.7.5!
The one supplied appears to be for 4.1.3.7.2 -- I can't tell for
sure, it's not labelled -- and when I tried it on my 4.1.3.7.5, it
deleted all the configuration files, mailed a 5MB core dump to my
boss, and mangled my /usr filesystem."

The horrors of C News installation arose for a reason.  We've
consistently balked at suggestions that we maintain a repository
of pre-cooked configurations for popular machines, because we
have no way to *test* them when operating systems change (or to
update them when our software changes, for that matter).  And a
handy pre-cooked configuration that's *wrong* is worse than
none at all.
-- 
"God willing... we shall return."       | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
       -Gene Cernan, the Moon, Dec 1972 |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry

>	cp config.mysys config.data
>	make world install
Nice idea, but it unfortunately doesn't address the simple issues:
	"I want to use gcc -O2, not cc -g"
	"I use usenet as the news admin, not news"
	"I use /news/lib and /news/spool not /usr/lib/news /usr/spool/news"
To say nothing of the hard issues that Henry has mentioned.

There is no silver bullet.
	/r$