Restore Distribution

[JC%sysiphos@Warbucks.AI.SRI.COM (Juergen Christoffel)]

    Date: Tue, 16 Oct 90 17:38:37 EDT
    From: orgren@RTC.Reston.Unisys.COM (Paul Orgren)

	[stuff about TV:NOTIFY source deleted]
   
    Just having gone through loading Genera 8.0, I would argue that the
    "Restore Distribution" is about the most brain-dead part.  We have
    only 3600-class machines here, with neither the need nor the file
    space to store Ivory-only files.  To de-select .IBIN files and
    Ivory-only systems took about 10 seconds per individual file and
    50-90 seconds per complete system; it also took 20 to 30 seconds
    just to go the next page.  All of this had to be done manually;
    it took over 2 hours just to specify that we did not want any Ivory-
    specific files restored from the tape!

In SYS:DISTRIBUTION;RESTORE-SPECIFIERS.LISP (which happens to be in
the "general" sources) you'll find the code which actually restores
files. In order to exclude all .IBIN files you could put a simple ADVICE
around the function which restores single files.

I admit that it is Symbolics' job to give the "Restore Distribution" a
better functionality, but nevertheless it's against the spirit of a
lispm to manually hack selections for two hours -- you are expected to
patch the sources instead ;-)

Regarding brain dead parts of Genera -- how about Flame-Up?

	--jc