Perl patches (was Re: shar 3.49 (part 2 of 2))

[Tom Neff]

In article <1990Sep21.020331.2225 at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>As for why it was such a particular irritation to me, my host site was
>a school system, perennially short for space, so I'd download perl to
>my home system (tedious in the extreme on a slow modem), delete it from
>the host site, and Boom! -- another patch.  Since no "patch" was available
>for my home system in those days, _upload_ perl, _patch_ perl, _download_
>perl, _delete_ perl on the host, iterate 25 more times.
>
>Folks releasing things in dribbles don't realize the byzantine transport
>mechanisms and tool compromises some of their audience has to suffer
>to accomodate their habit,

All this means is that if you want to be part of an ongoing development
project like Perl, don't do it on a tinkertoy setup where patching is a
terribly laborious process.  If you must use such a setup, wait a few
patches before rebuilding, or ignore the whole thing until a stable
version is released.

There are plenty of people whose systems accomodate new patches in a
matter of minutes.  Leave the intensive development cycle to them.  Mere
"patch envy" is a user problem.

-- 
Nobody wants justice.   /\ \/   Tom Neff
   -- Alan Dershowitz   /\ \/   tneff at bfmny0.BFM.COM