Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 15:37:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> To: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, Paul Richards <paul@originative.co.uk>, "David O'Brien" <obrien@FreeBSD.org>, Ralph Huntington <rjh@mohawk.net> Subject: Re: Stable branch Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1001005153142.36174A-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.001005113234.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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I think adding additional active development branches will cause problems, but I think that the following might help 1) Increased scrutiny of MFC's in advance so that there's less chance of errors being made (explicit pull-up requests, which are used widely in other open source projects) 2) Make release tags into branches, so that ERRATA and other relevant details for a release can be updated sensically, and so that bug fixes can be backported to the release branch by the release engineers or security officers. Maintain security bug support for the last two -RELEASE's, possibly more if there is demand, backport fixes to active and recent -STABLE branchs, and also allow new features in those branches given (1). Having changes possible in the release branch would mean it would be easier to generate binary updates for specific release versions, something that vendors might want to do when offering support for a specific version of FreeBSD. You could imagine even strategically laying down patch level tags on the branch -- 4.1.1-P1 would include a fix for finger, but be otherwise identical, and so on. These modifications would provide a model for users of FreeBSD releases to get killer bug fixes (the usual few stumbles over the three weeks after a release) and security bug fixes without any support for new features, as feature commits would not be permitted on release branches. Releng (-STABLE) branches would continue to support moderate feature inclusion based on slightly increased reviewing, and -CURRENT would continue to vary in stability widely :-). Robert N M Watson robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1 TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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