Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:54:12 +0100 From: Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> To: David Beukes <dbm@5fm.za.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Stable vs Release vs Current Message-ID: <20040218205411.GA33138@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> In-Reply-To: <web-238362961@mail01.infosat.net> References: <web-238362961@mail01.infosat.net>
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On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 01:35:20PM +0200, David Beukes wrote: > 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. All the 4.x releases are essentially snapshots of the RELENG_4 development branch. 4.4-STABLE refers to the RELENG_4 branch at any time after 4.4-RELEASE was created, but before 4.5-RELEASE was created. (And by the same reasoning 4.8-STABLE refers to the RELENG_4 branch between 4.8-RELEASE and 4.9-RELEASE.) If you install from a CD you will get 4.x-RELEASE. If you cvsup from the RELENG_4 branch you will get 4.x-STABLE, where 4.x is the most recent release. (You could also use cvsup to get some particular release if you wish, but that is rarely done.) If you should use RELENG_4_9 or RELENG_4 is a matter of taste. RELENG_4_9 is 4.9-RELEASE+security fixes only, and is therefore much less likely to introduce new bugs than the RELENG_4 branch, but you won't get any new features or non-critical bug fixes on the other hand. For more information you could read the following texts which should answer most of your questions: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/admin.html#RELEASE-CANDIDATE http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/index.html http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html#adv -- <Insert your favourite quote here.> Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se
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