Brooks Davis
2013-Jan-29 17:38 UTC
[RFC] possible non-backward-compatible change to install(1)
In CURRENT I have added a number of features to the install(1) command that are derived from NetBSD. One of them is the -M <metalog> option that causes new-style mtree entries to be emitted for each object that is created in the target. In the interest of compatibility and usability I removed the previous meaning of the -M option (disable mmap). I would like to MFC this change as is in violation of our usual practice, but before I do so I want to solicit opinions on the subject. I believe it is sufficiently safe to remove the -M option in a stable branch because: - It is not used in our source tree. - It is FreeBSD specific and thus it is used nowhere in portable software. - It has not been useful since the VM system stabilized in the late-90s/early-2000's so it is unlikely to be used in FreeBSD specific software. - In the unlikely even the -M option is in use in some historic Makefile or script, nearly all install commands that did it will result in command line validation errors. - Those that don't will not result in direct data loss. The benefit of the change is that (in conjunction with several other changes) it will be possible to build FreeBSD releases and some types of embedded media images without root privilege. Does anyone have strong (preferably non-hypothetical) objections to this change? -- Brooks -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 188 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20130129/85acd470/attachment.sig>