Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 06:56:46 -0800 From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> To: Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com> Cc: Warner Losh <imp@village.org>, stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why is -stable not secure? Message-ID: <16730.850834606@time.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 16 Dec 1996 19:19:38 MST." <Pine.BSF.3.95.961216184138.10949A-100000@alive.ampr.ab.ca>
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> - from an admin's perspective, -stable is far from dead. > There isn't even another release out yet; how can it be > dead? We need something to run on our servers. If it were And this is why I asked Richard Wackerbarth to put out a call among the -committers to see if someone wanted to be the contact person for changes to -stable. I agree that -stable is "dead" and should stay that way from the perspective of the main body of our developers, who really do need to put their time into moving forward. Paradoxically, I also agree that -stable probably has at least a year's worth of life left in it from the *user* perspective. We're downright encouraging people to stick with 2.1.6.1 and stay away from the 2.2 branch until 2.2.1 or thereabouts, so as Marc says, what are these folks expected to do until then? We're also still running CTM generation for -stable and haven't exactly turned out the lights there yet, so people might as well take advantage of the continuing infrastructure to syncronize their trees. However, one cautionary point: > - For a long time -stable was treated very carefully because, > well, it is supposed to be stable. That caution was > warranted and, to a large degree, still is. However, I > think that perhaps at this point in -stable's life people > should become less concerned about breaking the -stable tree > if that means they are more willing to commit to it. NO. I would say that the entire grounds for keeping -stable on life support on any terms would be that its charter be upheld even more strictly than before, if anything. Yes, that could have a chilling effect on commits, but if people are sloppy about maintaining -stable then what's the point? Customers might then as well then migrate to -current where their bug reports will at least be acted upon more quickly if -stable is going to start breaking. I agree that maintining 2.1-stable can have some positive benefits, but only if it's done with great care. Remember the people who you'd be supporting. Jordan
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