From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 17 18:35:40 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E6D31065677 for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:35:40 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from julian@freebsd.org) Received: from vps1.elischer.org (vps1.elischer.org [204.109.63.16]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 457708FC0C for ; Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:35:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from julian-mac.elischer.org (c-67-180-24-15.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [67.180.24.15]) (authenticated bits=0) by vps1.elischer.org (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id q0HIZb9e096495 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:35:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from julian@freebsd.org) Message-ID: <4F15BFB8.8020608@freebsd.org> Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:36:40 -0800 From: Julian Elischer User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.2.25) Gecko/20111213 Thunderbird/3.1.17 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: John Kozubik References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Steven Hartland Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:35:40 -0000 On 1/16/12 10:20 PM, John Kozubik wrote: > > > On Tue, 17 Jan 2012, Steven Hartland wrote: > >>> I was disappointed to see that 8.3-RELEASE is now slated to come >>> out in March of 2012. This will be ~13 months since 8.2-RELEASE >>> and is typical of a trend towards longer gaps between minor releases. >> >> ... >> >> I must say as a small company that runs ~200 machines on FreeBSD >> I do see where John is coming from, as it is very time consuming to >> keep >> things up to date and new is not always better e.g. we still have >> boxes >> stuck on 6.x as issues introduced in the Linux compat after that >> caused >> problems. >> >> That said I'm in two minds as the features that have been brought >> in by >> the more rapid dev cycle like ZFS have been great. > > > The features are great - nobody doesn't want the features! Like I > said in the original post, as wonderful as ZFS on FreeBSD is (and we > are deploying it this year) it is only now (well, in March) with 8.3 > that I feel it is finally safe and stable enough to bet the farm > on. I'm not the only one that feels this way. > > If that's the case, then, ZFS could have been developed just as it > has, in a development branch, and not been used as justification for > (mutiple) major releases and all of their disruption. but it would not have gotten the testing it did. > > As I said in the original post - we should be on 6.12 right now, and > bringing out 7.0, with ZFS v28. that was my feeling when we went to this "bring out a new major release every 3 weeks" scheme. We must however look at why Major and Minor releases are different. A major release means that kernel ABIs (inside the system) have changed. We needed to change the ABIs between 4 and 5 for sure (threaded kernel) and between 6 and 7 for sure, (second round of threading work). 7 and 8 also really required a change. I'm not sure about 5-6 and 8-9.