[BOGUS 1.0.90 is a snapshot of a work-in-progress. This is the _draft_ announcement for BOGUS 2.0, which is _not_ ready yet! We do not anticipate having time to release BOGUS 2.0 for another 12-18 months.] AUDIENCE The BOGUS distribution is designed to provide an extremely stable environment for the application software developer. We have taken time to provide an excellent development environment, including debugging and profiling versions of libc, libncurses, and other libraries; various debugging tools and libraries; and a rich set of development and language software with all available documentation. BOGUS includes complete support for X11 and TeX. Since we expect that part of a day will be spent installing BOGUS, but that many hundreds of days will be spent using it, we have decided to concentrate on the stability and completeness of the distribution at the expense of installation ease. BOGUS is not recommended for the Linux neophite, but should pose no problems for the experienced Linux systems administrator or professional software developer. PRISTINE SOURCES + PATCHES In July 1994, the BOGUS 1.0 release introduced the "pristine source + patches" paradigm to the Linux community. The BOGUS 2.0 release continues in this fine tradition, but with several refinements: 1) In general, the "pristine source" URL that is provided in the Notes file is actually the URL for the canonical source distribution. This helps you to find new releases easily as soon as they are released. 2) The patches we provide are minimal, avoiding gratuitous changes to Makefiles and config files when command-line options or redirected configuration input will suffice. This makes it relatively easy for humans to figure out how to build packages with complicated configuration requirements (e.g., perl). In the face of complicated configuration scripts, this human-readable information is essential when re-configuring another version of the software. 3) All binaries are optimized with -O3 -m486 (unless this causes bugs) and are stripped, providing enhanced performance and disk space savings. THE BOGUS DIFFERENCE We have continued the following practices which set this distribution apart from other Linux distributions: * Every binary in our distribution was compiled from original, pristine sources: _none_ of the binaries were compiled outside our group. In fact, BOGUS 2.0 was bootstrapped from a pre-2.0 version (1.0.90), ensuring that all of our binaries were compiled and linked against the libraries that we provide; and ensuring that you will be able to rebuild BOGUS should you decide to do so. * All of our pre-built binary packages contain complete, human-readable instructions on where to obtain the pristine source code and how to compile and install the original, pristine sources. * All of our Notes files and BOGUS-specific patches are available in a single tar file for those who want to see a complete description of BOGUS. * Our binary packages are stored in gzip'd tar format, so you can easily view their contents on any computer using common tools. Further, while we provide a package management tool, it is possible to install our binary packages simply by untar'ing from / and checking for any necessary post-installation commands. This provides a great deal of flexibility in emergencies and for those who may want to use our binary packages without also adopting our package management system. THE PM PACKAGE MANAGER BOGUS includes a powerful package management program, pm, which is used to 1) build binary packages from their "pristine sources + patches" 2) install pre-built binary packages (taking special care to preserve application-specific configuration files) 3) remove packages (taking special care when the contents of multiple installed packages overlap) 4) query the package database 5) verify the integrity of all installed packages (using MD5 checksums) One exciting feature of the query engine is the --whence option, which tells from whence a binary came. For example: $ pm --whence /bin/cat /bin/cat: textutils (description) Source: Patch: Installed: blah. MD5 checksum matches: blah [The version of pm included here is a branch of the version that was initially written by R. Faith and D. Hoffman under contract to Red Hat. Ideas and experience from early pms and pm implementations contributed to rpm and to this version of pm.] LICENSE Anyone who uses or distributes BOGUS is responsible for following the requirements of the various licenses which apply to the software contained in the BOGUS distribution. Many of these licenses require that you make source code available when distributing binaries (e.g., the GPL), or that you give credit to the authors in advertising or documentation. We do not add any restrictions to the use or distribution of the sources: our Notes files are in the Public Domain, and we place no additional legal restrictions on the use or distribution of our Patch files (patch files may be distributed in accord with the license that applies to the original, pristine sources). In accord with common standards of academic integrity and ethical behavior, however, we do expect to be given credit for any use of substantial portions of our work (but this is not a legally binding expectation). CDROM vendors who put the commercially distributable portions of BOGUS on a CDROM are encouraged to send us 3 complimentary copies of the CDROM (you don't have to do this, but if you do, it will make us more inclined to continue work on future versions of BOGUS). NO WARRANTY FOR THE LINUX BOGUS RELEASE THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. SUPPORT BOGUS is a labor of love devoid of monetary renumeration. As such, we provide ABSOLUTELY NO SUPPORT for BOGUS. Nor do we promise to fix bugs or create another new version.