[1528] in Release_7.7_team
Re: patches patch release?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert A Basch)
Fri Oct 23 14:14:19 1998
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Jonathon Weiss <jweiss@MIT.EDU>, release-team@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 23 Oct 1998 11:30:15 EDT."
<199810231530.LAA07942@small-gods.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 14:14:05 EDT
From: Robert A Basch <rbasch@MIT.EDU>
> > What do people think of the idea of foing a patch release to
> > explicitly update our Solaris (and IRIX) patches to the latest
> > recommended list, maybe around winter break/IAP of each year? Would
> > this be a lot of work?
>
> Sometimes when you put in a pile of patches, you get interoperability
> problems between local filesystems and the packs. So we'd need a bit
> of testing. But in general, I think this is doable.
On IRIX, putting in the latest "recommended" patch set may be unwise;
patch sets can include enhancements and changed functionality as well
as bug fixes, and so should be tested much more thoroughly than would
be the case for just doing bug fixes. And, since SGI recommends installing
the patches as a set, it's problematic to identify and install only
those patches that are fixes. (This may well improve in 6.5, where
SGI is dropping the current patch set scheme in favor of update releases,
in which you choose between a maintenance or new feature path).
We can still try to keep up on security patches, which may not be in
the patch sets anyway.
Bob
