Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm!ndsuvm1!ndsuvax!ncoverby From: ncoverby@ndsuvax.UUCP (Glen Overby) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: Something I thought I would try Keywords: complete collection, new idea, make it or break it Message-ID: <1939@ndsuvax.UUCP> Date: 8 Dec 88 05:32:08 GMT Reply-To: ncoverby@plains.nodak.edu (Glen Overby) Organization: North Dakota State University, Fargo Lines: 36 As a self-appointed keeper of one of the Minix archives, as well as trying to keep my own Minix system up-to-date with the fixes and features that come across the network, I face a real software maintenance problem. It's tough to keep up with entropy. This time around, I thought I would try something different; a complete collection of changes. In the past, I've saved each posting in a separate file on the archive, with a name as descriptive as possible. On my own system, I have had a rather random collection of changes applied to my system, and I've never really been happy with the state of it. I see the contributions from the net as falling into one of two categories: Evolutionary and Mutations. The Evolutionary changes do not modify the system in significant ways, such as bug fixes. These are also the changes which I see as the most likely to be adopted in the next formal release of Minix. Mutations, on the other hand, come from the hacker worlds and may make major changes to the system which could cause reliability problems but do add significant features. What I plan to do is make available on my archive server an (approximately) monthly update of all files changed over the past month, as well as since the base (Minix-PC 1.3) release. I'll keep a log of all the changes made, with credit to those who made them (mostly the From, Subject, and Message-ID header lines, along with any other notes that the author makes in the posting or I find in creating the new version). I have my first collection of "evolutionary" changes on ndsuvm1.bitnet / vm1.nodak.edu with the file names "FIXES EV1188[A-F]". Please refer to the archives section of the Minix Information Sheet I posted a few days ago for instructions on accessing this archive site. I am very interested in hearing opinions on how worthwhile the collection of changes is over random individual changes. Whether I continue this on a regular basis will depend on the responses I get. Any other constructive criticism is also welcomed. -- Glen Overby ncoverby@plains.nodak.edu uunet!ndsuvax!ncoverby ncoverby@ndsuvax (Bitnet) #! rnews