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Date:      Thu, 20 Feb 2003 23:19:59 +0100
From:      taxman <taxman@acd.net>
To:        Travis Troyer <troyertm@email.uc.edu>, Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: CVSup Tags and release status
Message-ID:  <200302202319.59400.taxman@acd.net>
In-Reply-To: <3E5598BE.2030200@email.uc.edu>
References:  <3E559505.6030703@email.uc.edu> <20030221030447.GA9846@rot13.obsecurity.org> <3E5598BE.2030200@email.uc.edu>

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On Friday 21 February 2003 04:10 am, Travis Troyer wrote:
> Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 09:55:01PM -0500, Travis Troyer wrote:

> >>This says that RELENG_4 is for FreeBSD-STABLE and that RELENG_5_0 is=20
> >>"used only for security advisories and other seriously critical fixes=
=2E"=20

That is referring to critical security fixes relating to that release onl=
y. =20
RELENG_5_0 is a release branch.   Basically release branches were recentl=
y=20
added that allow security fixes to go into each of them, so old releases=20
still get security fixes.

> >> Is this still the case now that 5.0 is the current release version? =
 I=20

yes but remember 5.0 is a release from the current branch and is still fo=
r=20
early adopters only.  make sure to read that page too.

> >>installed FreeBSD using the 5.0-Release ISO and want the most current=
,=20
> >>but stable packages, so I'm not sure which tag to use.
> >=20
> > There's no such thing as "stable packages", because the ports
> > collection is not branched.
>=20
> So what tag should I use for "FreeBSD-STABLE," as the handbook refers t=
o=20
> it?  Is RELENG_4 still correct?

In a word yes.
You'll want to read the handbook section that explains the difference bet=
ween=20
-current and -stable:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.=
html

this is also good to explain all the tags:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html

and finally these help explain releases:
http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.8R/schedule.html

the last two are pretty illustrative of the amount of work that goes into=
=20
putting together the kind of solid OS releases we've come to count on.


The recent release of 5.0-rel from the -current branch adds a little extr=
a=20
confusion since releases are normally from the -stable branch.  Eventuall=
y 5=20
will have a 5-stable branch.  For a while there was a 3-stable and 4-stab=
le=20
at the same time, so I imagine it will be similiar this time.  Releases a=
re=20
essentilly specific points along one of the development branches where th=
ere=20
was a code freeze for a while to do some additional stability fixes, test=
=20
releases (release candidates) made to help facilitate that, and then the=20
release is declared.  That makes these more "stable" and conservative tha=
n,=20
the -stable or -current development branches.

> >> If I=20
> >>installed FreeBSD from the 5.0-Release ISO, wouldn't I be running=20
> >>5.0-Stable and not 5.0-Current?

nope, as explained above, you'd be running 5.0 release.  (see the output =
of=20
uname -a  )

Hope that helped clear up a few things.  I think you'll reallize you've f=
ound=20
something pretty cool in FreeBSD.

Tim

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