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Date:      Wed, 21 Apr 1999 20:14:18 +0100 (BST)
From:      Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com>
To:        Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
Cc:        Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>, Matthew Reimer <mreimer@vpop.net>, freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: solid NFS patch #6 avail for -current - need testers files) 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904212009340.85882-100000@herring.nlsystems.com>
In-Reply-To: <199904211759.KAA07157@apollo.backplane.com>

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On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Matthew Dillon wrote:

> :Matthew Reimer wrote:
> :> Great work guys! It almost seems that -current is more stable than
> :> -stable!
> :> 
> :> Matt
> :
> :Funny you should mention it.  I've heard this from a number of people over
> :the last week..  One has even suggested using a particular known-good 4.0
> :snapshot in preference to a 3.1-stable for a production system......
> :
> :Cheers,
> :-Peter
> 
>     I think that people should stick with 3.x unless there is something in
>     -current that they really need such as the fixed NFS.  current's core is
>     very solid now and getting better, but a lot of the peripheral stuff 
>     has undergone rapid change.  The new bus structure, the new compiler, the
>     kernel build setup, configuration changes, and so forth.  It's hard
>     to keep up with it.  I expect it will settle down in the next month or so.
> 
>     Most of the bug fixes have been backported to -stable.  Getting the new
>     VM system into -stable ( which I want to do just after the 3.2 release )
>     is going to require brute force, though.  Unfortunately, the most recent
>     fixes to NFS fall into that category so NFS-centric installations may need
>     to use -current.

I wonder if it would be too radical to suggest that the release cycle for
4.0 be *much* shorter than the 3.0 cycle. Maintaining two branches gets
worse and worse as time goes on and it just becomes a waste of programmer
time. If we are reasonably careful with the 4.0 tree, I think a 4.0
release could be branched off it after 3.2 or maybe 3.3.

It seems to me that merging a complex set of changes (such as the VM fixes
or the new-bus work) from 4.0 to the 3.x branch would tend to produce a
system which was less stable than the 'natural' environment for the
software which is being merged across.

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037




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