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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


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