Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 13:38:15 -0400 (EDT) From: "Michael R. Rudel" <mrr@thud.pcs.k12.mi.us> To: Christopher Schulte <christopher@schulte.org> Cc: Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>, Matthew Emmerton <matt@gsicomp.on.ca>, Rasputin <rara.rasputin@virgin.net>, <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Releases Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.31.0104091328100.77835-100000@thud.pcs.k12.mi.us> In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010409111054.00b18008@pop.schulte.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
[... SNIP ...] Personally, I don't see a problem with the -CURRENT and -STABLE naming scheme. As someone said, anybody who can CVSup (not to mention get the sample CVSup files to work off of) yet not read the rest of the documentation has other issues. Renaming -CURRENT to -DEV or -DEVEL would be the equivlent of dulling all the knives in your house so that people don't cut themselves. As for -BETA, there isn't really a problem with this either, if you take it apart and look at it. From the Hacker's Dictionary, the definition of 'beta' is as follows: 1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in beta'. In the Real World, systems (hardware or software) software often go through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta (out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or unlucky) trusted customers. 2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility and reserving judgment. 3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is notoriously buggy). x.x-BETA is ... notoriously buggy. It has bugs, that's the point of the beta - to work the bugs out. If it didn't have bugs (that we knew about), it'd be -RELEASE. -STABLE is generally (with some execptions), more stable than -RELEASE, because it is a -RELEASE version with both ongoing bugfixes and (minor) new features. A release canidate is an almost ready release. Personally, I think these should be named GAMMA, DELTA, ... because that continues with the whole ALPHA or BETA trend. All these designitions do is indicate various stages of code freeze, and this is all documented places. Changing the whole release process of something that has worked for years isn't going to help anything, people are always going to be confused if you change it - if you suddenly change the way this shit is named, I'm going to be confused when 4.4 comes around or whatever. Just chill, and instruct people to Read The Fine Manual. -------------------------------------------------- Michael R. Rudel * 734.417.4859 * mrr@gotclue.org AOL AIM: ATSTheory * Cell e-mail: page@gotclue.org Network Engineer, Pinckney Community Schools Systems Engineer, NourDesign Corp Principal Engineer, Michael R. Rudel Consulting Authorized Representative, Charter Communications -------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.31.0104091328100.77835-100000>