From owner-freebsd-stable Mon May 24 23:49:23 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 743D214D0D for ; Mon, 24 May 1999 23:49:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA03390; Mon, 24 May 1999 23:50:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: "David Schwartz" Cc: "Mike Smith" , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [Q] How stable is FreeBSD 3.X ? In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 24 May 1999 23:28:00 PDT." <000001bea677$bc99d5f0$021d85d1@whenever.youwant.to> Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 23:50:18 -0700 Message-ID: <3386.927615018@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > bit longer prior to actual release. More effort could be made to obtain > wider testing for pre-RELEASEs. The RELEASE stream could be split off of > STABLE earlier and allowed to stabilize without bouncing STABLE around with > it. "More effort" can always be made, but if you leave release scheduling to pure conservatism then we release about once every other year; I've been there and I know this from empirical evidence. Every release, and I do mean *every* release, is an exercise in compromise. Go for perfection and 18 months will go by with people screaming for it and your developers saying "sorry, not ready yet! Ask again next month!" until all of you grow old. Go for a 2 day turn-around and Mistakes Will Be Made. What we've found in our current release schedule is about the best ratio between the two extremes. If you give people even more time by splitting early, do you know what happens? They move more slowly through a reduced sense of urgency, you don't magically get a linear gain in productivity. :) > I'm not saying any of these solution will work, but I am saying that he > provided enough information to identify the problem class. Identifying the problem class is not enough. As I said before, certain *minimum* standards must be met and a minimum is, indeed, a minimum. It's not even negotiable, I'm merely clarifying it for the sake of other readers. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message