Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2024 11:58:16 -0700 From: Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org> To: Peter <pmc@citylink.dinoex.sub.org>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Change to FreeBSD release scheduling etc. Message-ID: <3598c6db-6d8a-4efa-b5fc-1fc697608860@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <ZpPCADUpmCFHNa49@disp.intra.daemon.contact> References: <ZpPCADUpmCFHNa49@disp.intra.daemon.contact>
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On 7/14/24 05:18, Peter wrote: > In short, it takes me about 3 months to catch the surprizes[*] and fix > (or find out how to cope with) the concerning issues, regressions et > al. that come along with a new release. Up to now that would then give > another 9 months during which the systems can be operated in a > plan-of-record fashion, until the next release starts the hassle > again. While I see your point, we're hoping that having roughly 2x as many minor releases will result in at least a 2x reduction in the number of surprises per minor release -- because not only is less code changing between minor releases, but also committers feeling less pressure to hit a deadline may result in code being better tested and less surprise-prone when it lands in a minor release. > Thinking about what could be done for remedy, what comes to my mind > most easily is, simply support two most recent releases, so people > get the option to skip each other upgrade. That doesn't look like much > work, basically just backporting occasional security fixes. > So much as a spontaneous suggestion. Extending the minor-release support period might be possible, but that would depend on portmgr and secteam and I can't speak for them. One issue which would certainly come up is kernel module packages -- our packages are built for each stable branch on the oldest currently supported release, which means that e.g. new features in 14.1 can't be used until 14.0 is EoL; this is a problem particularly for graphics drivers. -- Colin Percival FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid
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