Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 11:32:44 +0200 From: Lefteris Tsintjelis <lefty@ene.asda.gr> To: Dima Dorfman <dima@trit.org> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD: Server or Desktop OS? Message-ID: <3DD7623C.A099C10@ene.asda.gr> References: <20021117115616.T301-100000@extortion.peterh.dropbear.id.au> <3DD6EEA0.AD524CA2@ene.asda.gr> <20021117073929.GC5793@trit.org>
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Dima Dorfman wrote: > > Lefteris Tsintjelis <lefty@ene.asda.gr> wrote: > > It sure is misleading. Why is it called -stable then? You would expect > > to stand up to its name. > > I think the name "STABLE" comes from stability in terms of the API and > ABI, not stability as reliability. That seems to be a much more > reasonable goal--not to say that reliability shouldn't be goal, but > that a development branch as -STABLE is should be expected to be > unreliable at times (this has been mentioned before). The API and ABI > in -STABLE are actually stable, unlike in -CURRENT . . . It is actually mentioned a few times before, including documentation, but it seems that some people are easily confused by the term -STABLE and relate it to reliable as well, not just the API and ABI. I made that mistake as a beginner user and took me a while to realize that -STABLE isn't necessarily -RELIABLE. I think it is easy for a newcomer to make that mistake because in general terms "stable" and "reliable" can be very close. I think that no newcomer will easily come to a conclusion that -STABLE applies to ABI and API mostly. That certainly wasn't the first thing that came to my mind just by the sound of it!). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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