From owner-freebsd-stable Fri Aug 16 14:59:25 1996 Return-Path: owner-stable Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id OAA21944 for stable-outgoing; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:59:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rocky.mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA21935 for ; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 14:59:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nate@localhost) by rocky.mt.sri.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA08561; Fri, 16 Aug 1996 15:59:06 -0600 (MDT) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 15:59:06 -0600 (MDT) Message-Id: <199608162159.PAA08561@rocky.mt.sri.com> From: Nate Williams To: rkw@dataplex.net (Richard Wackerbarth) Cc: "Rodney W. Grimes" , stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sup-ing stable In-Reply-To: References: Sender: owner-stable@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >I think there is enough confusion out there that the strings should be > >changed to this: > >TYPE="FreeBSD" > >REVISION="2.1.5" > >BRANCH="STABLE" > > Well, that is your opinion. My opinion is slightly different. > Here is my interpretation of the way things should be... > > "Stable", and for that matter "current", do not really designate > development branches. But, they *do* designate development branches. >I feel that they are simply aliases that reflect the > state of development. Using both "2.1.5" and "STABLE" is redundant. If so, then why do we have '2.1-STABLE'? You just said that 2.1.5 and STABLE are the same. > I think that "2.1" is the proper name of the branch. It is the name of the branch, but the confusion lies in the users, not the developers. Recent usage has been that 2.1-STABLE is 2.1 + stable patches. Keeping the -stable branch named to '2.1-STABLE' is true, although somewhat misleading since it really is 2.1.5 + stable patches'. In any case, I changed the strings to avoid the confusion which I felt occurred and agree with, or else we wouldn't be having this discussion. > However, to help avoid confusion among the uninitiated, perhaps we should > call today's version "FreeBSD 2.1.5-154","FreeBSD 2.1.5p154", or something > similar. This implies the users use CTM, which is definitely not the case for many users. CTM is only one of the 4 (5?) different distribution methods used. 1) CD-ROM (I'll lump all users of 'Releases' in the same manner). There is very little room for confusion here, except when a release is re-rolled using the same name. :) 2) Remote CVS - The release is designated by the date of the most recent update, so one can return to it using a particular date if necessary (although this doesn't work on branches). The state of the system is determined by the particular revisions on the files. 3) CTM - Richard' favorite, which uses numbers to designate a particular revision. 4) SUP - No way of getting back to where you were before or knowing where you are except by knowing what data you last did a sup, but generally this isn't a big deal. 5) CVSup - This is a combination of Remove CVS and SUP, with the ability to checkout via date (on branches even), or if you get the actual CVS tree you can determine where you are via dates as well. Nate