Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 19:54:49 -0600 From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> To: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Status of -stable Message-ID: <199606110154.TAA16483@rover.village.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 06 Jun 1996 08:36:10 PDT
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: Well, I liked -stable too! Are you sure you're not over-reacting to : the recent nightmare? That pesky post-traumatic stress syndrome thing? : Hey, in time, the night sweats and flashbacks will pass. :-) OK. I've read all the posts in -hackers and -stable on this. I'm only sending this to -stable. I like the idea of -stable where you have MAJOR bugfixes only. That's it. No mega-commits. No trying to get neat new features. Only security holes, core dumps, data corruption and kernel panic fixed. The current -stable branch has been good for me in that it is 2.1R + a few good patches. I'd be happy with that. Something that you'd have to SUP once or maybe twice a month to keep current would be ideal. Wanna commit anything else: Tough. Use -current. This is somewhat of a hard line, I know, but it would mirror well what standard practice in the industry is. I agree that the current -stable branch has gotten way out of hand and nothing like it should continue to exist in the post-2.1.5 world. Once 2.2 is out, it might be a good idea to have something like this around, but only with a much more restricted scope. Looking at the logs, I'd restrict the patches to about 1/10th their current (backed out) size. There were two problems, that I saw from the bleachers, with this: 1) -stable and -current had drifted so far that automated source code control of merging was nightmarish at best. 2) -stable had too many changes to it after 2.1R was released. Any future -stable branches should be relatively small deltas from the last release. I tend to think of -stable as 2.1R with all the supported patches to 2.1R pre-applied. I appreciate the monitary concerns raised here. I think that if the volume of deltas are very small, one person could handle them in a sane manner. Would make a good way to donate to the FreeBSD project, IMHO. If no one comes forward, then I believe that the right approach would be to kill the whole -stable concept. While it does differentiate FreeBSD from the other BSDs out there, it is not worth undue stress and strain on the core team to make it happen. However, that said, I understand and appreciate that the core team will do what they want with their time. I further understand that it is unreasonable for me to demand anything other than a CD rom when it suits their (and not my) fancy (subject of course to my payment for the cdrom). I appreciate what the core team has accomplished and am proud to use the fruits of their labors and hope to continue to be allowed to do so. Warner
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