Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 14:42:33 -0800 From: Studded <Studded@dal.net> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 'Code Freeze' Message-ID: <35119F59.31A203BC@dal.net> References: <199803192215.OAA26828@dingo.cdrom.com>
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Mike Smith wrote: > > Let me just make one salient observation about this whole thread. > > > My point -- and I think, Micheal's, is that a truly stable CD would > > raise FreeBSD far above the run of the mill Unices -- commercial or > > otherwise. > > The stability, or otherwise, of the CD releases is *entirely* in the > hands of the user community. I disagree strongly with this point taken literally, however see below. > Previous releases have experimented with protracted BETA and GAMMA > stages. Others have adopted the "everything's quiet, lets do it Right > Now" attitude. > > In every single case, people have only ever complained about problems > _after_ the release is cast in stone. The temptation is very strong to > simply ignore this sort of complaint - the gate is closed, the horse > long gone. The last two releases have had problems that had nothing to do with the user community at all. The 2.2.2 release was a disaster and never should have happened. There were significant security bugs that were discovered after the 2.2.5-Release tag was applied but before the CD's were cut and the decision was made not to do a point release to address those issues. Whatever the merits of those decisions, they had nothing to do with the user community at all. Now all that being said I agree in principle that the users need to take a more active role in beta testing releases. I have one of the heaviest loaded FreeBSD servers in the world and I update the OS as often as possible (especially close to a release) to do what I can to help. I also run a day-by-day -Stable at home and squawk loudly when something happens to it. :) I know that there are others who do the same. I think that more people would be willing to get involved with testing if the last minute crush to get stuff under the wire hadn't been such a big problem in the past. I think (and this is unfortunate because I still believe it's a good change) the new slice code is another example of something that's going to prevent people from being enthusiastic about beta testing. Finally, for all of those calling for a new beta period, are you aware that the new slice stuff is the only major change since the beta period was announced? Do you follow the cvs-all list? The only things that have gone in are bug and doc fixes. I don't think another beta period is required. We're 10 days into the one we have, and 10 more left (at least) for some more serious testing. Doug PS to mike, Can you please send a version of your instructions/warnings about the new slice code to freebsd-doc with all the latest information? I have to admit that I'm a bit fuzzy about the current canonical instructions and I want to make sure that the info is available for the "urgent news" web page that Nik's doing and for the FOO.TXT docs on the CD. Thanks. -- *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** *** Proud operator, designer and maintainer of the world's largest *** Internet Relay Chat server. 5,328 clients and still growing. *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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