From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Sep 4 08:42:23 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id IAA07616 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:42:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from phoenix.volant.org (phoenix.volant.org [205.179.79.193]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id IAA07611 for ; Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:42:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from patl@phoenix.volant.org) From: patl@phoenix.volant.org Received: from asimov.phoenix.volant.org ([205.179.79.65]) by phoenix.volant.org with smtp (Exim 1.92 #8) id 0zExzA-0004mf-00; Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:41:16 -0700 Received: from localhost by asimov.phoenix.volant.org (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id IAA19937; Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:41:13 -0700 Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 08:41:13 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: patl@phoenix.volant.org Subject: Re: SMP Compliant Kernel? To: "Jan B. Koum " cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > If this does not belong to -hackers, excuse me then. > > What is the future of FreeBSD in term of after 3.0? Will there be > concurrent 4.0 development with a lot of radical and non mission critical > code? Or will releases just stay around 3.x for a year or so? If there > will be 4.0 as soon as 3.0 is out, what are some of the cool features that > 4.0 will have - merced port? Alpha? A port is not sufficient reason, in itself, to bump the major number. I'm not sure what the FreeBSD project's criteria are; but most companies reserve major number increments for changes which break backwards compatability. (For some definition of breakage. For FreeBSD, the need to use a 'compat*' library to run binaries built on systems with a lower major number would be considered a break.) Sometimes this rule will be relaxed to include major additions to functionality or extensive internal re-writes or re-design. 3.0 is adding ELF support and switching to it as the primary format, adding SMP, switching the SCSI architecture to use CAM, etc.; so it clearly qualifies for a new major number. But it will probably take several releases for all of the fallout of these changes to be handled so that 3.x becomes a truely stable system. (E.g., I don't expect the first 3.x/CAM release to support all of the devices that 2.2.7 does.) -Pat To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message