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

From: Aleksey Gurtovoy (agurtovoy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-01 22:55:32

Vladimir Prus writes:
> 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.

That was the intention from the very beginning; I just had a 
misconception what they are, and other arguments weren't very
convincing.

--
Aleksey Gurtovoy
MetaCommunications Engineering