Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 22:48:29 -0700 (PDT) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <freebsd@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> To: dima@unixfreak.org (Dima Dorfman) Cc: sjt@cisco.com (Steve Tremblett), freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Releases Message-ID: <200104110548.WAA38089@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net> In-Reply-To: <20010411043041.07F373E09@bazooka.unixfreak.org> from Dima Dorfman at "Apr 10, 2001 09:30:40 pm"
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...
>
> Comments and suggestions welcome.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dima Dorfman
> dima@unixfreak.org
>
>
>
> How -STABLE becomes -RELEASE
>
> Minor releases, i.e. releases where the minor version number is
> greater than zero, are tags, or points, on the RELENG_X branch
> corresponding to their major version number. Before a release is
> made, the branch its being cut from goes through a ``code freeze''.
>
> A code freeze is the state in which all changes to the respective
> branch must be approved by the release engineer before being committed
> {XXX footnote explain 'commit'}. During the code freeze, the branch
> is renamed from ``-STABLE'' to ``-BETA''. There are two reasons for
> this seemingly unreasonable change:
>
> 1. Right before the code freeze (a few days), a lot of
> changes--fixes and others--are merged from -CURRENT (``MFC'd''). This
> isn't an intentional part of the release cycle; it just so happens
> that developers wait until the day before the freeze to merge the
> changes they want in the release (and since this is a volunteer
> project, we shouldn't ask them to do otherwise). Thus, the quality of
> the code right before the code freeze is slightly impaired.
The only comment I have is perhaps we should slightly change the
actual procedure such that the -BETA goes on when the Release
engineer announces the impending release, as that is when the
flury of MFC commits start, and when the tree start to go down
hill as far as stability. IMHO, the -BETA phase is usually marked
to late in the time line...
This would also give a clear marker to the commiters as to when
the have to start asking the release engineer for MFC/commit
permission. During -BETA it is open house, at -RC you have to
ask for permission.
Also some minor rewording may help, the code isn't really frozen
until the release engineers says okay, stop doing all that nasty
MFC stuff guys, it's time to re-stabalize this tree and get a
release out the door.
[If it was me still doing releases the commiters wouldn't even
know it was about to happen, I'd just come along and go, yep,
this is building pretty good, it's March 15th and time to cut
a release... boom boom.. tag down.. beta build and pushed out...
okay folks find the critical bugs and point me at MFS's to pull
over, and I don't want to here what feature you'd like to see,
it can wait for another 90 days, trust me.]
[Jordan, put down that AK-47 I feel drawing a nice cross hair on
the back of my head and calm down.... Also IMHO your doing just
a fine job as things are, we just have different MO's :-) :-)]
--
Rod Grimes - KD7CAX @ CN85sl - (RWG25) rgrimes@gndrsh.dnsmgr.net
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