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To: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
Subject: Re: Status of -stable 
Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG
In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 06 Jun 1996 08:36:10 PDT
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 19:54:49 -0600
From: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>
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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