Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 16:34:49 +1000 From: David Nugent <davidn@datalinktech.com.au> To: Michael Gerhards <HM-Gerhards@web.de> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: problem with sk? Message-ID: <44603809.1090203@datalinktech.com.au> In-Reply-To: <dt74j3-un.ln1@neptun.hmg.homeunix.net> References: <t2hui3-ms.ln1@hmg.homeunix.net> <55123.193.138.135.19.1146922482.squirrel@sigma.interami.com> <1pqui3-v11.ln1@hmg.homeunix.net> <445EF61D.3060009@datalinktech.com.au> <dt74j3-un.ln1@neptun.hmg.homeunix.net>
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Michael Gerhards wrote: >>Apparently the timeout problem is fixed in -CURRENT, and will be merged >>after 6.1-RELEASE. Enjoy. >> >> > >Sounds good to me. I guess this won't be more than a few days, perhaps >1-2 weeks?! > > That is up to the committer, but I would imagine so. >>Tracking -STABLE is a Good Thing, IMHO, quite aside from the security >>updates, bugs which don't even affect you right now (but may do >>sometime) get fixed, and the -STABLE tag tends to be quite appropriate. >> >> > >I am quite new to FreeBSD and so I am not that familiar with all these >things. But I read at some places that -STABLE is not always really >stable and should not be used on productive systems. So I thought >-RELEASE might be the correct choice for me. > > Actually, my own experience is that -STABLE is better suited to production systems, but YMMV. I don't think we are talking a big difference in relative stability. Note that I work in an environment where application upgrades are also relatively frequent so upgrading the OS as well requires very little extra effort (and is the only reason at all that production boxes are occasionally rebooted). -RELEASE is a snapshot of -STABLE which may or may not have problems (the whole idea of the release engineering process is reducing such problems if possible without introducing more to hopefully make a release less problematic than any other aribtrary snapshot) and in theory should provide the most stable OS, but the point to note is that -STABLE usually really means stable. There are normally no surprising new features being added and no intrusive changes to the way things work - just security, bug fixes and non-intrusive/optional features and enhancements as the version number increments, and you're tracking (in theory) better maintained code. Exceptions do happen when, for example, a bug is introduced or exposed, but not intentionally. The process of upgrading -stable has rarely caused me any grief at all if the instructions in src/UPDATING are followed. If you *really* need to be more conservative you can be more specific and track RELENG_6_1 so that you track only 6.1-RELEASE and subsequent security fixes but I've rarely done so for very long and don't see any advantage in freezing the OS at a specific version and do see plenty of disadvantages in not automatically getting fixes like the one being discussed here. Again YMMV, it depends a lot on how tolerant you can be of the once in a blue moon glitch that may or may not happen and whether new functionality or fixes brought into the stable branch is useful to you. Regards, David
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