Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2005 04:54:20 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: WOB <wayofbsd@verizon.net> Cc: FreeBSD-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Desktop usability ideas. Message-ID: <20050918015420.GA6314@flame.pc> In-Reply-To: <432CC5E2.4010602@verizon.net> References: <432C8FFC.8030002@verizon.net> <432CC5E2.4010602@verizon.net>
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On 2005-09-17 21:41, WOB <wayofbsd@verizon.net> wrote: > I think part of my solution is to encourage other newbies to track a > release instead of stable. So we would follow "5_4" instead of "5", > since "5" is on its way to become "5_5" - and might have some bugs with > the features that are being added. > > I read about this here: > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html It's great that you have found this page by yourself. I was about to post a reply pointing to that webpage, but now you know where it is :) Having said that, I think that I also need to point out that there exist at least the following types of FreeBSD 'versions'[1]: - The "release" versions that are, as you know now, frozen in time snapshots of the source. These never change *after* the release date, which is good if you want to know exactly what features or bugs are there, but also a bit bad because no bugs get fixed in the "release" version of the source tree. These snapshots are tagged with a label like: RELENG_5_4_0_RELEASE The label does *NOT* move to different versions of the source files after the release is cut. - The "security branches" are offshoots of the "release" version, created when security fixes are made to a release. These may change as security problems are found hat affect the source of the release. Their names are of the form: RELENG_X_Y - The "stable" branch, is a separate branch of development that is kept "stable" by committing only a controlled number of features and bug fixes. This is named: RELENG_X - The "development" branch (sometimes called "HEAD", from the special CVS branch that matches this version of every file, or "CURRENT" in FreeBSD circles). New features are constantly being added here, the source tree changes very often and may be rather unstable (even to the point of crashing your systems or damaging useful, important data) at times. Which one of the above matches your taste is largely a personal matter :) [1] The term 'versions' here refers to slightly different source trees, not to version numbers like 4.10, 4.11 or 5.4.
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