Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 20:54:26 -0400 From: "C. Ulrich" <dincht@securenym.net> To: Scott Schappell <archon@silvertree.org> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Seeking advice for new server: 4.8-REL vs. 4.9-BETA Message-ID: <200309260056.h8Q0ugP26234@anon.securenym.net> In-Reply-To: <3F732FB9.9000900@silvertree.org> References: <20030925171846.GA54272@polands.org> <20030925175342.GA54334@polands.org> <3F732FB9.9000900@silvertree.org>
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On Thu, 2003-09-25 at 14:11, Scott Schappell wrote: > The way I understand it is there are three "branches" > > CURRENT - the cutting edge source, use at your own risk, etc (5.x). This > is a branch that is in development. > STABLE - this is the development branch for a current dot release. For > example 4.9 right now is in the STABLE branch and has gone through a > certain level of testing in CURRENT. 4.9 right now is PRERELEASE, but > it's still considered STABLE. Since it's still a dvelopment branch, it's > prone to bugs (but not as many as CURRENT) as used primarily for > contributors to the project or folks who want to stay as absolutely > current in their current RELENG version (4). > RELEASE - this is a branch that is the most stable, it's only updated to > fix security or system issues. >From what I can tell, this is mostly correct. Release engineering seems to be a little tricky. If I read the docs right, it's better to keep in mind that there are only two main development branches, -CURRENT and -STABLE. -RELEASE is just a snapshot of either branch at appropriate intervals (the docs say approximately every 4 months). The purpose of a -RELEASE is to stabilize the code bases enough so that a release of the branch can be made for bumping up the version number and sending it out on a CD. As of this writing, the two latest -RELEASEs are 4.8-RELEASE and 5.1-RELEASE for -STABLE and -CURRENT respectively. HEAD is the active CVS development branch where all the brand-new code goes and winds up as the next -CURRENT release. In this case, 5.2-RELEASE. You don't ever want to track HEAD unless you're developing, insanely curious, or just insane. This is how it's all laid out in my mind, yours may differ. :P (If it does, let me know!) FreeBSD release engineering is quite complex but when I try to wrap my head around it, it seems to make some sense from a development point of view. > If you're tagging *default tag release=. (that's a literal . not a > punctuation mark) then you're tracking CURRENT (5.x) > If you're tagging *default tag release=RELENG_4 you're tracking 4.x STABLE > If you're tagging *default tag release=RELENG_4_8 you're tracking 4.8 > RELEASE (security branch) - this is what I'm following in my cvsupfile. > > Again, this is how I see it after reading the handbook, and I may be a > bit off the mark :). I got my information (or inferred it) from the Release Engineering page: http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html I think the docs there might explain the release process a little better than the handbook (but will obviously be more technical.) C. Ulrich -- http://bityard.net
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