C News patch of 7-Sep-1990

[Drew Sullivan]

In article <1990Sep18.222450.25228 at zoo.toronto.edu> henry at zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>- How do you know whether it is safe to apply a C News patch?  Well, how do
>  you know if it is safe to apply a B News patch?  Numbering/dating has
>  nothing to do with it.
>
>- How do you know whether you have the latest C News patch?  Well, how do
>  you know whether you have the latest B News patch?  Numbering/dating has
>  nothing to do with it.  Actually, dating is probably ahead here, since
>  if you have last February's patch, you might suspect you are behind,
>  while having patch 12 tells you nothing of the kind.

That is why you need both dates and numbers.

>The date-based naming scheme has one advantage and two disadvantages, aside
>from purely personal feelings about it.

When updating a release, I look at both the patch and the patchlevel.h file.
What would be best is to have both a number and a date beside the number
in the patchlevel file.  (PATCHDATES for cnews fans)

a new version of PATCHDATES that would be better is
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Release	Date		Notes for Cnews
0	23-Jun-1989
1	7-Jul-1989
2	23-Jul-1989
3	22-Aug-1989
4	24-Aug-1989
5	14-Sep-1989
6	13-Nov-1989
7	10-Jan-1990
8	16-Jan-1990
9	17-Jan-1990
10	18-Jan-1990
11	12-Mar-1990
12	14-Apr-1990
13	15-Apr-1990
14	16-Apr-1990
15	25-May-1990
16	1-Sep-1990
17	7-Sep-1990    (16+17 must be applied together)
--------------------------------------------------------------------

In this way you can tell both how old the software, how current it is
and if all of the patches have been applied and that no lines have been
lost from the patchlevel file.
-- 
  -- Drew Sullivan, <drew at lethe.uucp>