Date: Sun, 09 Jul 2000 21:20:56 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com> To: "David J. Kanter" <djkanter@northwestern.edu> Cc: FreeBSD stable <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: UPDATING is confusing me Message-ID: <39686E28.CDF2A57B@newsguy.com> References: <20000707213841.A5215@localhost.localdomain>
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"David J. Kanter" wrote:
>
> The latest RELENG_4 UPDATING (version 1.73.2.6) file is confusing me because
> I don't know how much of the historical information applies to someone like
> me, who wants to upgrade from 3.5-Stable to 4.0-Stable. Perhaps I don't
> understand the concept of UPDATING (it's always been a blank file during my
> upgrades): Why is there months-old historical information that is necessary
> for me to follow, even though my sources (albeit 3.5) are very current?
3.x and 4.x are "branches". There development is made in parallel.
Imagine then as two parallel lines in time:
1999 2000
3.x
+------------3.1-------------3.2------------3.3-----------3.4-----------3.5--->3.5-stable
|
4.x
+-----------------------------------------------4.0-------------->4.0-stable
So, changes added to the 3.x line are not the same as the ones added to
4.x line.
Now, at one point in time, 4.x did not exist. When 3.x became "stable",
4.x was "branched" out of it (actually, what happens is the exact
opposite, but that's a technicality of the program used to do this, cvs,
let's not get into that).
As work was being done on 4.x, sometimes big changes happened in the way
things worked, changes that required users to take special care or to
perform special steps when upgrading, or modify configuration files.
Whenever something like that happened, a special notice was added to
UPDATING, with a date indicating when it took place (so you would know
if you already had dealt with it or not).
Now, this kind of big changes are frowned upon on -stable branches (to
say the least), so -stable branches are unlikely to require a file such
as UPDATING.
Let's now look at your examples.
> Here's an example: The note for 19991218 has sendmail.cf moved to /etc/mail,
> but my system works perfectly fine with sendmail.cf in /etc.
Your system is 3.5. That has not happened on 3.5. But it happened on 4.0
at December 18, 1999. When you install 4.0, your system will expect to
find sendmail.cf on /etc/mail instead of /etc.
> And another: The note for 19991210 has the wd driver replaced with the ata
> driver, but my machine works fine with the wd driver.
Your machine is 3.5. The ata driver has not been added to the 3.x
branch. But on 4.0, the default driver for IDE disks is the ata driver.
The wd driver is not compiled in by default anymore, and has been
deprecated. It will sooner or later start collecting some bit rot, and
all sorts of problems can be expected from their usage instead of the
ata driver. In other words, you better modify your configuration files
(the kernel configuration file, if you use a special one, and
/etc/fstab) to account for it.
> My system started with an install from the 3.4-Release CD-ROM a few months
> ago, then went to 3.4-Stable and then 3.5-Stable via source upgrades.
>
> How far back do I need to go in the historical information? Is this
> historical information taken from when 4.X was -current, and that's why the
> dates don't match up for me, who was tracking 3.X?
While this is correct as far as 4.x being current at the time these
modifications were made, the reason why the dates don't match is that
they refer to the 4.x branch, which is not the 3.x branch.
--
Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS)
dcs@newsguy.com
dcs@freebsd.org
capo@the.great.underground.bsdconpiracy.org
<jkh> _DES: The Book of Bruce has only one sentence in it, and it says
"the actual directives of my cult are left as an exercise for the
reader. Good luck."
<EE> jkh: does it really include the 'good luck' part?
<jkh> EE: OK, I made that part up.
<jkh> EE: I figured it should sound a bit more cheery than how Bruce
initially dictated it to me.
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