From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Jun 23 1:36:18 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from smtp.wanadoo.nl (smtp.wanadoo.nl [194.134.193.6]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F72937B401 for ; Sat, 23 Jun 2001 01:36:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from steveo@eircom.net) Received: from ams-gw.sohara.org (p1505.vcu.wanadoo.nl [194.134.170.230]) by smtp.wanadoo.nl (8.11.2/8.11.2) with SMTP id f5N8a1J28830; Sat, 23 Jun 2001 10:36:01 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2001 10:35:57 +0200 From: "Steve O'Hara-Smith" To: "Jason Watkins" Cc: joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Message-Id: <20010623103557.547f67c5.steveo@eircom.net> In-Reply-To: References: <15155.56039.812973.488190@zircon.zircon.seattle.wa.us> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.4.99cvs3 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-unknown-freebsdelf4.3) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 17:09:58 -0700 "Jason Watkins" wrote: JW> I react rather badly to some of your comments concerning the usability of JW> FreeBSD. Our goal *should* be a simple and turnkey system, or at the least, That would be a RELEASE. They are usually pretty good at being just that IMHO. JW> I mean better equip the commiters. Such things are possible, and done every JW> day in the software world. Many aspects of code review and regression JW> testing can be automated. The time of volenteers in the committer group is The time it takes to set up good automated regression testing is amazing, it is also a good way to perpetuate bugs. More importantly such testing is nearly useless in the face of new functionality, or timing and compatability issues. The general quality of -stable indicates that pre commit testing is done rather better than average in the industry. Remember that in most of the industry the only people who see software at the equivalent of -stable are *developers*. It is not unusual for software to emerge from several weeks of regression, integration, acceptance and soak testing into the field only to get bug reports in the first week of real use. JW> Again, what I see as the problem is -stable isn't as stable as some people Frankly you are dreaming if you think -stable can get much better without slowing down a lot, at which point you hit the security fix branch which never contains any feature that hasn't survived a Beta test. Hammer on the Beta and RC phases to improve the quality of this. -- Directable Mirrors - A Better Way To Focus The Sun http://www.best.com/~sohara To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message