From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Mar 15 20:49:49 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mailbox1.ucsd.edu (mailbox1.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.53]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16481150BB for ; Mon, 15 Mar 1999 20:49:44 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rjdawes@physics.ucsd.edu) Received: from physics.ucsd.edu (huntington.ucsd.edu [132.239.73.96]) by mailbox1.ucsd.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id UAA00427; Mon, 15 Mar 1999 20:49:25 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost by physics.ucsd.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id UAA19793; Mon, 15 Mar 1999 20:47:45 -0800 Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1999 20:47:45 -0800 (PST) From: "Richard J. Dawes" X-Sender: rjdawes@huntington Reply-To: Richard Dawes To: Garance A Drosihn Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: An Idea [was "What do people think of May 1st for a 3.2 release date?"] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I'm not aware what are the "logistics" involved. But I do see how the diversity of configurations and hardware could lead to diffi- culties. (I run SMP myself.) But that's why I was trying for a "keep it simple", "unofficial" approach. If some people have different problems than Jordan, or whoever might make such decisions as I suggested... well, that's the main reason this mailing list exists, isn't it? Having to address important out- standing issues in the sphere of one's own systems is clearly a case where a close tracking of STABLE (with contributions, of course!) is necessitated. In any case, I would hope (as do you, I sure) that, over a one or two month period, the general state of STABLE improves somewhat, for just about any configuration. My idea, in a nutshell, is to give people easier access to that level of improvement, in general, with very minimal fuss on anyone's part, and without disrupting the normal cycle of releases. If there be caveats, then just state them openly in Readme form. Anyway, I openly acknowledge that my view of things is too primitive. (Hopefully this will change over time.) Sorry for persist- ing in the face of your gentle response. I won't waste any more band- width on this. --Rich On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, Garance A Drosihn wrote: > At 1:09 PM -0800 3/15/99, Richard J. Dawes wrote: > > First, keep the longer release interval in place, whatever you > > all think that should be (6 mos., a year, whatever). Then, simply > > designate on a regular basis (monthly, bimonthly, whatever) some > > source-snap to be an entirely unofficial subrelease (is > > "point-release" the lingo?). It should probably be a couple weeks > > old at least, one that seems to have the best combo. of bug fixes > > vs. new bugs caused by them. > > A nice idea in theory, but in practice the logistics would probably > be a bit problematic. > > > This way, the regular development cycle can be preserved. > > Dummies (like me ;-), though, would have a means for being quite > > reasonably sure that such "stable-snap" source would build into > > a more stable system then what the last CD provides, and yet not > > have to follow the day-to-day developments with freebsd-stable. > > A given snapshot may have the best combo of "bug fixes" vs "new > bugs" in Jordan's opinion on Jordan's systems, but that isn't > going to be much consolation to someone who blindly (ie, "without > having to follow freebsd-stable"...) picks it up and is badly > hit by one of those new bugs. > > One problem is that you're thinking of "stability" as a single > value for all users, and that's not true. One snapshot may be > "wonderfully stable" for single-CPU machines, for instance, but > have a serious problem in it for multi-cpu configs. Or it would > be great for everything except people using 'softupdates'. > > The difficultly is that you're hoping for something that someone > can pick up and use without thinking too much about it. To do > that requires some testing and legwork, and once you have the > FreeBSD project doing that legwork then they might as well do > the legwork for a real release. > > Just my opinion... > > --- > Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu > Senior Systems Programmer or drosih@rpi.edu > Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message > ======================================== Richard J. Dawes rdawes@ucsd.edu ======================================== To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message