Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 01:31:03 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: Aleksander Rozman - Andy <andy@kksonline.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: freebsd 4.0 Message-ID: <3742E747.5D2D656D@newsguy.com> References: <199905190757.JAA22813@sundance.KKS.net>
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Aleksander Rozman - Andy wrote: > > I was looking around 'net few days ago, and I came across some files made > for FreeBSD 4.0, but after that I looked on FreeBSD.org and there wasn't > any version 4.0. Is this just a hoax or is FreeBSD 4.0 in existence? 4.0 is the next major release of FreeBSD. For now, and for a while, all -stable releases of FreeBSD will be in the 3.x line. These are minor releases, which do not introduce big changes and we try our best to avoid breaking compatibility backward compatibility (binary, file formats, etc). Meanwhile, our fearless developers are cooking the 4.0 version. This branch is known as 4.0-current, or just -current (since when 4.0 becomes stable, the current branch will become 5.0-current). Our developers are fearless because a -current system is something in development, and, thus, subject to all sort of bugs, which can wipe out your disks, burn your monitor, erase your BIOS, overheat your CPU(s), spit out your PCI cards, send the fans flying (sometimes throwing stuff at them first), make international phone calls to phone sex services, print pornography until your printer runs out of paper/toner (sorry, no such luck... it's just the Stark report), send insulting faxes to your boss, cheat on the mob and blame you for it, attract attention for the gentle I.R.S. personel, blow your house fuses, open the gas and then set your house on fire, make your girlfriend break up with you (or your wife cheat on you), and bomb Yuguslavia. This last one we are trying to debug, though. Because of the above, we advise against using -current. If you so insist, the following rules must be obeyed: 1) Read cvs-all. No, I'm not kidding. I mean it. 2) Read freebsd-current. Yeah, that one too. 3) If something fails, it's probably because you missed a message on cvs-all or freebsd-current. 4) If that's not the case, it's probably a temporary bug. Cvsup again after the appropriate time (minimum of one hour, though one full day is not unreasonable). 5) If it still crashes *at the same location*, then it's probably your fault. Junk your customized settings, and try to reproduce it with a vanilla system. 6) If you can reproduce it even with a vanilla system, then you might actually have stumbled on a bug. Congratulations! Find out what the bug is, and send us the patches. 7) If you are not capable of the above, you might just keep quiet and wait until someone fixes it. See steps 1 and 2 for how do you know someone fixed it. 8) OTOH, you might help tracking the bug. See the handbook on getting crash dumps, kernel traces, and such stuff. 9) If you loose all data on your hard disks because of a bug, that's one of the risks of running -current. Either you can deal with that, or you shouldn't be running -current. These rules, though written tongue-in-cheek, are for real. FreeBSD 4.0-current is *not* supposed to work all the time. It is being *developed*. And saying "Hey! I have a bug!" does *NOT* help developers. Furthermore, sometimes it breaks *on purpose*, while things are being changed, and the fixes are *not* immediate. If you can live with that, and think you have any compelling reason to run -current, read the handbook for further instructions. Sorry if this seems too harsh, but many people are just not used to the concept of a development tree available publicly, and think of it as the "latest version". It is *not* the latest version. When it is *ready*, it will be the latest version. Until then... read the above. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you." To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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