[boost] Re: Re: [1.32 Release] Draft tarballs are available

From: Vladimir Prus (ghost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-01 10:21:49

Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:

> Vladimir Prus writes:
>> Aleksey Gurtovoy wrote:
>> 
>> >> The first two archives does not give write permissions to the user
>> >> (for the unarchived files).
>> > 
>> > That's intentional. After all, normally you shouldn't be modifying
>> > anything in the distribution. Or should you?
>> 
>> No unix source package I ever downloaded had read-only files.
> 
> Could our long-time unix users confirm/negate this experience?

FWIW, Debian policy says the same:

   http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s10.9
 
>> If I want to edit them, I'll edit them anyway.
> 
> Sure, if you know what you are doing. You are not supposed to be doing
> that, though, so that fact that you have to apply an extra effort here
> shouldn't matter. 

Why I'm not supposed to do that? Say, I have a number of patches which are
needed for my project (which I do have). I'd expect to be able to get
tarball and apply the patches. 

> IOW, the point is that there are hardly any use cases 
> for editing the files that came from the tarball that favor "easiness
> of editing", and there is a number of use cases in support of read-only
> status.

This all is pretty subjective, so I'd suggest to stick to existing
practices.

- Volodya