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Date:      Mon, 9 Apr 2001 15:54:32 -0400
From:      "Matthew Emmerton" <matt@gsicomp.on.ca>
Cc:        <stable@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Releases
Message-ID:  <014a01c0c12e$e5e76f20$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.32.0104100522430.38514-100000@xeon.int.nz.freebsd.org>

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It's a good thing that I put my flame-retardant suit on this morning before
I checked my e-mail.  I hadn't expected this much debate about the naming.

The basis consensus of the group has been that -CURRENT and -STABLE are
well-established, mean the appropriate things to the appropriate people, and
are self-documenting enough for those who need to know, but also that there
exists a requirement for documentation to be improved in certain areas.

In the case of people running -CURRENT on a production machine, that's just
a plain and simple mistake.  Ever wonder how someone who barely knows how to
use cvsup and make world manages to obtain -CURRENT in the first place?
Most of the time these people have only used cvsup to sync the ports tree -
which uses "tag=.".  They figure that getting the most recent source code
would be the same, and do so.  Unfortunately, they end up with -CURRENT
instead of the latest -RELEASE.  Here the problem isn't with cvsup, but
rather a lack of knowledge about CVS and the concept of tags.  RTFM is the
solution (section 18 and appendix A in particular.)  This said, I retract my
suggestion that -DEV replace -CURRENT, since it wouldn't make a difference.

Next, the case of -STABLE/-BETA/-RC/-RELEASE.  I still maintain that -BETA
is confusing to the newbie (since due to M$, betas of IE were more like
pre-alphas and totally trashed most systems and rightly freak out most
novice admins), while STABLE/RC/RELEASE just makes sense.  However, this
isn't in the handbook and should be, so that people on the list can say "go
to handbook/release-process.html" and people unfamiliar with our release
process will become enlightened.

Next, the case of the bind and ntpd updates.  Yes, these were fixed
in -STABLE and -CURRENT very quickly, but were only documented in UPDATING.
How many people who are running -RELEASE have this?  That's right, none.  If
the "current release" box had an "Newsflash" or other such link to inform
users of 1) critical bugs that exist in the current release, and 2) HOWTOs
that show how to fix them, then a lot of the confusion surrounding these
fixes would be resolved.

Finally, almost every newbie I see asking a question asks "how can I do this
on FreeBSD, and where is the HOWTO- to help me?"  Most often these people
are redirected to offsite repositories of information,  rather than the
documentation included with FreeBSD.  IMHO, this contributes to the
degradation of the existing documentation of FreeBSD, as more effort will go
into updating third-party sources.

The summary?  If we can accurately answer newbie's questions with solid
documentation (rather than everyone's pet solution in the lists), then we
are "teaching a newbie to read", and will hopefully have to service fewer
requests from that newbie in the future.

--
Matt Emmerton


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