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.