Re: Retiring WITHOUT_CXX

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 09:09:54AM -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> [ Charset UTF-8 unsupported, converting... ]
> > On Fri, 26 Nov 2021 at 04:09, Rodney W. Grimes
> > <freebsd-rwg@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > So is the feature model of FreeBSD becoming, oh it gets broken
> > > cause it is not regularly tested, so lets remove that feature.
> > 
> > I don't agree with that. We have a large and growing CI infrastructure
> > to regularly test functionality and are continually adding to it over
> > time. But it's important to test and maintain what is actually used
> > and is useful. Disabling C++ support made sense when obrien@ added the
> > original knob in 2000, but it makes less sense today when parts of
> > FreeBSD are written in C++.
> > 
> 
> You can disagree with my assertion, but I shall continue to assert
> that it *seems* as if rather than adding B O S to the CI such that
> it is not only regularly tested, but continuously tested is the
> correct path forward here.   Removing an option that seems to
> break due to not beeing tested (your original assertion) is not
> only false (I pointed out, and do know for a fact that Michael
> Dexter runs BOS on a very regulary basis, infact near continously.)
> and the wrong path forward.
> 
> Fix the broken stuff, stop letting stuff rot because you don't care
> to work on it, or because it is not being "tested".

This is a volunteer based project people are doing their best to try to fix
broken stuff if
1/ they are aware of the issue
2/ if they are able to fix it.

The limit of a volunteer project is how much time everyone can dedicate to it.
The more options we have and more complex it is to ensure that every
combinations do work.

It is interesting how much you are patronizing every one on what should be
fixed and what should be done and how but you are actually doing nothing as an
individual to help here, you can volunteer to fix things at your level you know?

This thread is about the usefulness of an option, and yet noone has demonstrated
the usefulness of WITHOUT_CXX here in 2021.

For any embedded systems the WITHOUT_* have never been enough and there are way
to build a very very tiny viable FreeBSD image in an industrial manner which are
way more efficient that the WITHOUT KNOBS. I am not saying we should stop
providing those, just we should stop maintaining the one that makes no sense
anymore or are very complicated to maintain.

Best regards,
Bapt