Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:18:08 +0200 From: Peter <pmc@citylink.dinoex.sub.org> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Cc: cperciva@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Change to FreeBSD release scheduling etc. Message-ID: <ZpPCADUpmCFHNa49@disp.intra.daemon.contact>
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Folks,
there was recently a message from Colin Percival, concerning the
release schedule.
And now I see on the main webpage a new release 13.4 announced
to appear soon, while the upgrade to 13.3 was only recently.
I read statements concerning the rationale behind this. These
statements circle around the feasibility from a workflow perspective.
I do understand that developers do not want to wait a year for their
ready-made new features to roll out. On the other hand I see a
serious issue from a reliability perspective.
A new release is a rough time. For some 2-3 months, issues do pop
up, and, depending on the complexity of a configuration, unexpected
things do no longer work in production - mostly regressions.
Some examples from 13.3 would be PR 276862, 278338 or the [in]famous
275594.
If time allows, I tried to identify these during BETA - but this
appears to be mostly futile. So for some issues (like, less recently,
D19488 delaying the system startup for 5 minutes) I might just decide
to fix them locally, or live with it - which nevertheless adds to the
ripples and disturbances during the months after a new release.
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.
With the new concept this does seriousely change.
So, while I understand the agenda, I would like to bring into
conscience that this is not without unpleasant effects at another
side.
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.
regards,
PMc
[*] Example surprize of today for 13.3-RELEASE: kernel crash from
sysctl_iflist(), invoked by dhcpcd, whilst shutting down vimage
jails. Apparently the involved [re]moving of netifs somehow
conflicts with other things.
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