From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 18 03:35:29 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CADAA16A4CE for ; Wed, 18 Feb 2004 03:35:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail02.infosat.net (mailout04.infosat.net [66.18.69.4]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55EEA43D1D for ; Wed, 18 Feb 2004 03:35:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dbm@5fm.za.com) Received: from [66.18.70.28] (HELO mail01.infosat.net) by mail02.infosat.net (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.1.8) with ESMTP id 47022144 for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Wed, 18 Feb 2004 13:35:20 +0200 Received: from [196.30.188.35] (account dbm@5fm.za.com) by mail01.infosat.net (CommuniGate Pro WebUser 4.1.8) with HTTP id 238362961 for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Wed, 18 Feb 2004 13:35:20 +0200 From: "David Beukes" To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailer: CommuniGate Pro WebUser Interface v.4.1.8 Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 13:35:20 +0200 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Stable vs Release vs Current X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 11:35:29 -0000 Hi, Have been using FreeBSD for about a year now but haven't understood or found a definitive answer to the versions/branches. Would appreciate it if someone could shed some light; a bit of history follows: I installed 1st FreeBSD system from 4.4 (the only cds I could get my hands on). By the time I started understanding what I was doing, 4.8 was out. So I CVSup'd the source and did the whole make buildworld/installworld kernel thing. And I was running 4.8... Question here is, was I running 4.4 release? or 4.4 stable? when did 4.8 become stable (are you starting to catch my drift?). Then in December 2003 (about a month after 4.9 was announced), I downloaded ISOs for 4.9 and reinstalled from scratch. Same questions as before, am I running 4.9 stable? release? When did release become stable? Am now running 4.9 and started cvsupping the source. my supfile has this line in it: default release=cvs tag=RELENG_4_9. Am I wasting my time? Should it rather read RELENG_4? If so, why? And where do security patches fit into this story? Any info would be helpful. Thanks, David