From owner-freebsd-current Sat Oct 18 19:59:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA18167 for current-outgoing; Sat, 18 Oct 1997 19:59:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current) Received: from dyson.iquest.net (dyson.iquest.net [198.70.144.127]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA18161 for ; Sat, 18 Oct 1997 19:59:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from toor@dyson.iquest.net) Received: (from root@localhost) by dyson.iquest.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) id VAA01896; Sat, 18 Oct 1997 21:59:09 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" Message-Id: <199710190259.VAA01896@dyson.iquest.net> Subject: Re: usable current SNAP In-Reply-To: <19971019111802.57002@lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Oct 19, 97 11:18:02 am" To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 21:59:09 -0500 (EST) Cc: smp@csn.net, current@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Greg Lehey said: > On Sat, Oct 18, 1997 at 06:55:43PM -0600, Steve Passe wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I need to bring up a web server this week using current. This needs to > > be a "works first time" installation (to impress a client). > > I don't understand this. This is *not* the purpose of -current. To > quote: > (good comments from Greg deleted) > > If you want to impress a customer, I would have thought that -stable > would be a much better choice. > The only point that I might disagree with you on is that there are times that there are necessary features in -current. Basically, with -current the person who uses it is on their own. Hopefully, those who use it don't end up giving FreeBSD a bad reputation because of the pre-Alpha/Alpha/Beta quality of the code. Important features would be practically the only reason for violating the "rule." -stable and -current aren't that far away in performance (it isn't like 2.1 vs. 2.2.), 2.2 and 3.0 are pretty close. My opinion is that those who use -current in production get absolutely no sympathy from me (or most others on the team.) However, some people who are actively contributing to FreeBSD get quite a bit more leeway (I am willing to go further out of my way to help) than others. (They are more likely to understand the state of the code, and are generally willing and able to help us all more in solving problems that they encounter.) But, in general, I agree that it is not a very good idea to use -current in production without understanding that the support issues are significant. The FreeBSD group of developers are already overloaded, and simply do not need the additional problems of supporting -current. There is very little more irritating than to be coerced to fix a bug that isn't ready to be fixed yet. -- John dyson@freebsd.org jdyson@nc.com