Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2001 10:59:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Ken Bolingbroke <freebsd@bolingbroke.com> To: Steve Tremblett <sjt@cisco.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Further question Re: cvsupped to RELENG_4 but got 4.3-RC Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104051050060.7158-100000@fremont.bolingbroke.com> In-Reply-To: <200104051347.JAA03586@sjt-u10.cisco.com>
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On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Steve Tremblett wrote: > I was under the impression that 4-STABLE was primarily for bugfixes > applied to the 4.2-RELEASE codebase, and 4-CURRENT is for development > of new features. Given that rationale, 4.3-RC should be a preliminary > merge of CURRENT code into STABLE. The intruduction of (relatively) > unproven code into an established as-stable-as-possible codebase > introduces instability until after it has been tested, therefore just > because 4.3-RC == 4-STABLE, that does not imply that 4.3-RC == stable. No, that's not how it works. It goes like this: 4.0-CURRENT -> 4.0-STABLE -> 4.1-RC -> 4.1-STABLE , etc There is no 4-CURRENT now. -CURRENT is currently 5.0-CURRENT. At some further point in time, 5.0-CURRENT will become 5.0-STABLE. But you'll never have another -CURRENT merged into 4-STABLE. And in the -STABLE branch, whatever the current name, the general idea is to introduce only small changes, bugfixes, security updates, and the like. So if you're following -STABLE at 4.2, you should be thinking of 4.2-STABLE as (4.2-RELEASE + bugfixes). And 4.3-RC would be (4.2-STABLE + more bugfixes). And 4.3-RELEASE will be (4.3-RC + yet more bugfixes). One difference is that commits are locked down in the -RC stage, so there's less change, less chance of things breaking when the branch is in the -RC stage. People tend to think it's a "beta" in the way Microsoft or other vendors might do a beta of their OS, but that's not how it works here. Given this, I feel that -RC is a safer bet than any arbitrary -STABLE, given that -STABLE is constantly changing, with less review than it gets in -RC. Ken To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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