Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 02:34:03 -0700 From: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> To: juha@saarinen.org Cc: joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010624023403R.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> In-Reply-To: <00cf01c0fc40$c0348db0$0a01a8c0@den2> References: <15157.11221.593513.478892@zircon.zircon.seattle.wa.us> <00cf01c0fc40$c0348db0$0a01a8c0@den2>
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From: "Juha Saarinen" <juha@saarinen.org> Subject: RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 12:00:59 +1200 > "19.2.2.2. Who needs FreeBSD-STABLE? > If you are a commercial user or someone who puts maximum stability of > their FreeBSD system before all other concerns, you should consider > tracking FreeBSD-STABLE. This is especially true if you have installed It's probably time to rewrite that paragraph substantially. It was something of a tactical error to encourage certain interest groups to run "work in progress" code, even if that work is very carefully bounded and kept "in progress" for the shortest periods possible. You just can't have a code base which is actually going places and having things actively updated (which is generally a really good idea, especially when the updates involved fixing bugs) and also guarantee that it's particularly usable for anything. Whether it builds flawlessly without warnings or not, it still represents a fairly significant unknown quantity until such time as you've frozen the code and spent a few weeks, at minimum, collecting user reports and making very carefully selected changes. We've also heard any number of suggestions for "fixing" the problem, from aggressive automated tagging (which would be tremendously expensive with CVS and not fix the "builds but doesn't work" problem) to extensive regression test suites that nobody seems to have time to actually write. As I said at the beginning, perhaps it's time to simply re-write the Handbook paragraph which inadvertently "sells" -stable as a solution for certain types of problems it was never meant to solve. - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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