From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 14 05:26:10 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (unknown [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E82C11065678 for ; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:26:09 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from royce.williams@gmail.com) Received: from mail-gh0-f182.google.com (mail-gh0-f182.google.com [209.85.160.182]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 97CF58FC15 for ; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:26:09 +0000 (UTC) Received: by ghbz22 with SMTP id z22so1222022ghb.13 for ; Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:26:03 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:in-reply-to:references:from:date:message-id:subject:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=EY/7GzkQ3Bh0mEqWq+IxWLW1F4Kzc9yxjbx4W8xAu3M=; b=x1hzYLXuHPzrydUw/+FYjBpQqpLkjPrieL4BywXRB89E+0NC2HSxbjHkLOGf/Eecs1 RtzbySGG63IHXirMMqLejzA+S5rABeHel61+4ZGBdnn72tTH7Y5n9R/KDZ8Yc7oZBnbk 3SzYCT3pnGVeNy7wpcjtAN+cTZltTk1GaRZtZHiIEYFXJK5coLkPCw2bTqavLguoHapf FFpYiUh2cmjr3mIcNbM55c89HMPCb3gglH+R5BoUlx+WDfQG7K/OrPinOyfYRj/evXf5 CeeBR1i6DZKtJj5b1lraTUZz6emgcoGTf5Y7knOEbUdbZRWLqRb2YSYkKF7D45Gs97jc N7SA== Received: by 10.50.161.198 with SMTP id xu6mr159104igb.40.1339651563432; Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:26:03 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.64.90.229 with HTTP; Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:25:43 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <201206130853.32687.jhb@freebsd.org> <20120614042602.GA6638@lonesome.com> From: Royce Williams Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:25:43 -0800 Message-ID: To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: Upcoming release schedule - 8.4 ? 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: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:26:10 -0000 On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Adrian Chadd wrote: > On 13 June 2012 21:26, Mark Linimon wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 08:50:24AM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote: >>> The only way that this would really work is if there were dedicated >>> sustaining engineers working on actively backporting code, testing it, >>> committing it, etc. >> >> I'm going to agree with Garrett here. =A0IMHO we've reached (or surpasse= d) >> the limit of what is reasonable to ask volunteers to commit their spare >> time to. =A0This is doubly true when we have more than one "stable" bran= ch. > > I totally concur. Ah, but you can get the same effect by freeing up those engineers to work on the hard stuff. This is my usual soapbox (see [1], [2]): Push more of the mundane work out to the edges, so that the developers can focus more on the core (like more releases/features/testing/projects). Here are some ideas. Only developers can implement them, but they would start paying for themselves immediately ... in developer time. - Frequent snapshots, with tools to automatically apply them and roll them back (freebsd-update + ZFS snapshots?). - Tools to do binary walks of snapshots to pinpoint when a bug appeared. (Think 'git bisect' + freebsd-update.) - A taggable FAQ that supports faceted search, and a quick way to add entries (or propose them for approval). - A way to search for known fixes to transient bugs and hardware issues [1]= . - General debugging and testing tools for non-developers, including tools for filing smarter bug reports. - A way to automatically upload crash dumps for bulk analysis (like Windows does). - A dmesg analyzer that downloads a list during install, and looks for known issues (or workarounds) with your hardware for that version of FreeBSD (or recommend a different version!). Tools like these would also help more people achieve the "I tried it, and it Just Worked" moment. This can keep people's interest long enough to give FreeBSD a serious try. Some of them might enter the volunteer pool. I'm not a developer, but if some of the above could be tackled, they might free up enough Developer Equivalents (DEs, a term which I have just made up) to be more than worth the effort. Royce [1]. http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-doc/2011-September/018865.h= tml [2]. http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2012-January/037310= .html