Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 13:56:40 -0700 (PDT) From: "Bruce A. Mah" <bmah@FreeBSD.org> To: Perforce Change Reviews <perforce@freebsd.org> Subject: PERFORCE change 20160 for review Message-ID: <200210252056.g9PKueFk029027@repoman.freebsd.org>
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http://perforce.freebsd.org/chv.cgi?CH=20160 Change 20160 by bmah@bmah_intruder on 2002/10/25 13:55:47 Add rwatson's "Chicken and Egg" analogy. Mention some other new features. Finally make a pass through this whole thing for typos, grammos, and just plain bad writing. Nobody to blame this on but myself. Affected files ... .. //depot/releng/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter-50/article.sgml#6 edit Differences ... ==== //depot/releng/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter-50/article.sgml#6 (text+ko) ==== @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ <corpauthor>The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team</corpauthor> </authorgroup> - <pubdate>$P4: //depot/releng/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter-50/article.sgml#5 $</pubdate> + <pubdate>$P4: //depot/releng/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter-50/article.sgml#6 $</pubdate> <copyright> <year>2002</year> @@ -38,12 +38,11 @@ <para>FreeBSD 5.0 marks the first new major version of FreeBSD in over two years. Besides a number of new features, it also contains a number of major developments in the underlying system - architecture.</para> - - <para>Along with these advances, however, comes a system that + architecture. + Along with these advances, however, comes a system that incorporates a tremendous amount of new and not-widely-tested code. Compared to the existing line of - 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> releases, 5.0 may have regressed + 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> releases, 5.0 may have regressions in areas of stability, performance, and occasionally functionality.</para> @@ -55,29 +54,39 @@ future. We feel that such users are probably best served by upgrading to 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> only after a 5-STABLE development branch has been created; this may be around - the time of 5.1 or 5.2.</para> + the time of 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE.</para> + + <para>(FreeBSD 5.0 suffers from what has been described as a + <quote>chicken and egg</quote> problem. The entire project has + a goal of producing a 5.0-RELEASE that is as stable and reliable + as possible. This stability and reliability requires widespread + testing, particularly of the system's newer features. However, + getting a large number of users to test the system, in a + practical sense, means building and distributing a + release first!)</para> - <para>This article describes some of the issues. We begin with a + <para>This article describes some of the issues involved in + installing and running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE. We begin with a brief overview of the FreeBSD release process. We then present some of the more noteworthy new features in FreeBSD 5.0, along with some areas that may prove troublesome for unwary users. For those users choosing to remain with 4-STABLE-based releases, we give some of the short- to medium-term plans for this development branch. Finally, we present some notes on upgrading - existing 4-STABLE systems to 5.0.</para> + existing 4.<replaceable>X</replaceable> systems to 5.0.</para> </section> <section> <title>An Overview of the FreeBSD Release Process</title> - <para>FreeBSD employs a model development that relies on multiple - development branches. The main branch is called + <para>FreeBSD employs a model of development that relies on multiple + development branches within the source code repository. The main branch is called <quote>CURRENT</quote>, and is referred to in the CVS repository with the <literal>HEAD</literal> tag. New features are committed first to this branch; although this means that CURRENT is the first to see new functionality, it also means that it - occasionally suffers from breakages as new functionality is + occasionally suffers from breakages as new features are added and debugged.</para> <para>Most FreeBSD releases are made from one of several @@ -105,27 +114,29 @@ <para>Therefore, the release engineering team will only create the 5-STABLE branch in the CVS repository after they have found a - relatively stable state to use as its basis. There may be + relatively stable state to use as its basis. It is likely that + there will be multiple releases in the 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> series - before the 5-STABLE branch is created; current estimates are + before this happens; we estimate that the 5-STABLE branch will be created sometime after 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE.</para> - <para>More information on FreeBSD release engineering can be found + <para>More information on FreeBSD release engineering processes can be found on the <ulink url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/index.html">Release - Engineering Web pages</ulink> and in the FreeBSD Release - Engineering article.</para> + Engineering Web pages</ulink> and in the FreeBSD <ulink url="http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/index.html">Release + Engineering</ulink> article.</para> + </section> <section> <title>New Features</title> <para>A large attraction of FreeBSD 5.0 is a number of new - features. These features and functionality generally involve + features. These new features and functionality generally involve large architectural changes that were not feasible to port back to the FreeBSD 4-STABLE development branch. (By contrast, many - self-contained enhancements, such as device drivers, or new + self-contained enhancements, such as new device drivers or userland utilities, have already been ported.) A brief, but not exhaustive list includes:</para> @@ -161,6 +172,12 @@ </listitem> <listitem> + <para>GEOM: A flexible framework for transformations of disk + I/O requests. An experimental disk encryption facility has + been developed based on GEOM.</para> + </listitem> + + <listitem> <para>FFS: The FFS filesystem now supports background &man.fsck.8; operations (for faster crash recovery) and filesystem snapshots.</para> @@ -171,6 +188,11 @@ supports extended per-file attributes and larger file sizes.</para> </listitem> + + <listitem> + <para>Cardbus: Support for Cardbus devices.</para> + </listitem> + </itemizedlist> <para>A more comprehensive list of new features can be found in @@ -243,7 +265,7 @@ </itemizedlist> <para>Because a number of these drawbacks affect system stability, the - release engineering team recommends that more conservatives sites + release engineering team recommends that more conservative sites and users stick to releases based on the 4-STABLE branch until the 5.<replaceable>X</replaceable> series is more polished.</para> @@ -259,12 +281,12 @@ <para>As of this writing, the release engineering team has no definite plans for future releases (past 4.8) on the 4-STABLE - branch. However, a 4.9 release or even a 4.10 release are + branch. However, a 4.9-RELEASE or even a 4.10-RELEASE are likely possibilities. Any future releases from this branch will - likely depend on several factors. The most important of these + depend on several factors. The most important of these is the existence and stability of the 5-STABLE branch. If CURRENT is not sufficiently stable to allow the creation of a - 5-STABLE branch, this may require and permit more releases + 5-STABLE branch, this may require and permit more releases from the 4-STABLE branch. Until the last declared release on the 4-STABLE branch, new features may be merged from HEAD at the discretion of developers, subject to existing release @@ -279,7 +301,7 @@ <para>The &a.security-officer; will continue to support releases made from the 4-STABLE branch in accordance with their published policies, which can be found on the <ulink - url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/index.html">Security web + url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/index.html">Security page</ulink> on the FreeBSD web site. Generally, the two most recent releases from any branch will be supported with respect to security advisories and security fixes. At its discretion, @@ -307,7 +329,7 @@ or obsolete executables or configuration files polluting the new system.</para> - <para>As of this time, the binary upgrades option in + <para>As of this time, the binary upgrade option in &man.sysinstall.8; has not been well-tested for cross-major-version upgrades. Using this feature is not recommended.</para> @@ -374,8 +396,7 @@ or an <literal>installworld</literal> is generally sufficient. If this step is not taken, confusion may result (especially with C++ programs) as the compiler may wind up - using obsolete header files mixed in with the (intended) - up-to-date ones.</para> + using a mixture of obsolete and current header files.</para> </section> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe p4-releng" in the body of the message
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