deprecating kerbsrc.zip

Benjamin Kaduk kaduk at MIT.EDU
Wed Sep 19 16:56:11 EDT 2012


[setting reply-to since kfwdev does not seem to get much discussion 
traffic]

Hi all,

I have staged on github ('kfw' branch) an update to src/windows/README 
which attempts to bring it up-to-date with the recent changes that have 
gone in towards KfW 4.0.0.
As part of that staged update, I claim that the kerbsrc.zip method of 
building kerberos on windows is no longer supported; this is, however, not 
a claim that I wish to make unilaterally.

We had traffic on kerberos at mit.edu last month that seemed to indicate that 
the zipfile had broken, with error messages such as "don't know how to 
make 'clients\kswitch\Makefile.in'".  I don't know of anyone using it for 
development (though nor have I really asked) -- I have been using VMware 
shared folders to copy a git checkout into my VM, and I believe other 
developers are just using git clients natively on windows.

Does anyone think that we should attempt to retain the kerbsrc.zip target? 
(Is it worth attempting to verify that it is indeed currently broken?)
Given the availability of git clients for Windows, and github's ability to 
produce zip files on demand, getting the source on Windows is surely an 
easy matter.  The freely available Utilities and SDK for Subsystem for 
Unix-based Applications from Microsoft can provide the sed/awk/cat/cp 
which were potentially avoided by the kerbsrc.zip target (having never 
actually used it, I am not 100% certain on its reason for existence).
Simply put, I don't know of a reason for kerbsrc.zip to stay around, and I 
don't see a need to put effort into fixing and maintaining it.

Does anyone think we should continue to maintain and support kerbsrc.zip?
I plan to remove the Makefile glue for it in a separate commit if we 
decide not to keep it.

-Ben


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