From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Mar 19 09:34:13 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15A13106566B for ; Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:34:13 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [65.122.17.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E27FF8FC1E for ; Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:34:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [65.122.17.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7F84546B49; Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:34:12 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:34:12 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Jack Raats In-Reply-To: <91210A8474CD444786833AFD3542BCCA@jarasoft.net> Message-ID: References: <1237299551.80881.16.camel@bauer.cse.buffalo.edu><20090318102134.D55869@ns1.as.pvp.se> <91210A8474CD444786833AFD3542BCCA@jarasoft.net> User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: kama , Ken Smith , freebsd-stable Subject: Re: FreeBSD 7.2 Release process starting... X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:34:13 -0000 On Thu, 19 Mar 2009, Jack Raats wrote: >> One of the most important things for us to keep an eye on in this release >> is that the boot loader now works on a number of pieces of hardware on >> which it reressed for 6.4/7.1. If it proves successful, we'll likely also >> do errata notes and roll new ISOs for 6.4. > > About FreeBSD 6.4. If you consider to make new 6.4 iso's, perhaps it would > be better to think about an 6.5 release???? It's a question of bandwidth for the release engineering team, ports team, security officer team, etc -- I think a 6.5 is pretty much out of the question right now with 8.0 preparing to ramp up and 7.2 now in flight. That gives us a short menu of options: - Errata patches - Errata patches + ISO reroll - Point release Because of the boot loader issues, errata patches don't really cut it alone, as if you can't install, you definitely can't apply errata patches :-). This suggests a reroll or a point release. For me the distinction remains fuzzy, but I think a key to either approach would be avoiding having to fully re-QA, do BETAs, build new packages, etc. This suggests taking RELENG_6_4 on some date, perhaps rebranching if it's a point release, or not if it's an ISO reroll, and bundling it with exactly the same packages we shipped in 6.4 (etc) and bumping a few documentation parts. We'd cut a release candidate just to make sure we had the bits right, ask people to test install it, etc, but as there would be no new features, we'd expect relatively little change. I think I wouldn't even change the proposed EoL date of the branch -- 7.x is doing very well, and we need developers to focus on getting 8.0 ready to ship. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge