Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!vanvleck!uwmcsd1!leah!itsgw!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!nelson
From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: PATCH usage
Message-ID: <1129@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 30 Jun 88 13:38:42 GMT
References: <393@sce.UUCP>
Reply-To: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson)
Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY
Lines: 23

In article <393@sce.UUCP> graham@sce.UUCP (Doug Graham) writes:
>    In a similar vein, I noticed that when "perl" first appeared
>on the net, it was immediately followed by a large number of
>patches. (Around 25 I think) Since these patches came so close
>on the heels of the original source, it seems to me that they
>must have been available when the original source was posted.
>Why were they not applied before the source was posted?

I cannot answer for Larry, but for my free IBM-PC editor, Freemacs, it
is *much* easier to have one distribution with patches than several
distributions.  I keep a copy of all my distributions and patches
forever, so I have an incentive to keep the number of distributions
low.

The comp.sources.unix programs often sit queued up for a while, and
during that time, perl && patch && virt are available for anonymous
ftp.  Therefore, by the time Usenet sees a program, there have already
been a number of "real" users finding bugs.  I suspect that Larry
keeps the moderator updated with patches, and he bundles them up when
he posts the program.

-- 
Pray that Bush gets re-elected so that the Republicans will be blamed for it.