Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 23:32:01 -0800 From: "Crist J . Clark" <cjclark@reflexnet.net> To: "Dib, Allan L" <Dib.Allan.L@edumail.vic.gov.au> Cc: "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: CURRENT, STABLE, RELEASE, SNAPSHOT ??? Message-ID: <20001109233201.V75251@149.211.6.64.reflexcom.com> In-Reply-To: <AB00AFFA26B4D31183520090276120C77F594A@edu001ms009.edumail.vic.gov.au>; from Dib.Allan.L@edumail.vic.gov.au on Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 05:56:46PM %2B1100 References: <AB00AFFA26B4D31183520090276120C77F594A@edu001ms009.edumail.vic.gov.au>
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On Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 05:56:46PM +1100, Dib, Allan L wrote: > Hi all.. > > Can someone please explain to me what the deal is with all these various FreeBSD > versions/designations.. See, http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/current-stable.html But here is the short story. There are two "live" branches of FreeBSD at any one time. CURRENT is the bleeding-edge, experimental development branch. It is for the most part, developers only. STABLE is the other branch. It is better tested and, as the name implies, more stable. Periodically, STABLE is frozen and even more thoroughly tested, while it is in this stage it is called BETA and RELEASE-CANDIDATE. Then this RELEASE-CANDIDATE is blessed as a RELEASE version, the version number is upped by 0.1, pressed on CDs, put on ftp sites, etc. The minute RELEASE is out, small fixes and upgrades start going back into STABLE which now wears the incremented version number too. But again, for empahsis, there are only two live branches, CURRENT and STABLE. RELEASE versions are just STABLE branch snapshots that have been more thoroughly tested and prepared for release as a complete package. RELEASE-CANDIDATE and BETA are just labels for STABLE when it is being prepared to be a RELEASE. Oh, and snapshots are just that. Snapshots of any branch at a given instant. To wrap up, I must tell you that I just lied. There are the 1.0 version jumps. About every *mumble-mumble* (18?) months, there is a freeze of CURRENT and it is thoroughly tested. It is then blessed as a .0 RELEASE. At this point, the tree branches. CURRENT goes off with new exciting changes and STABLE gets bug fixes and incremental upgrades. Actually, I lied twice. Old branches, like the 3.x-STABLE branch, are not instantly dropped, but backported bug fixes steadily decrease with time. Only important security fixes still find their way to 3.5-STABLE, and I don't think anything gets back to 2.2.8-STABLE (don't even ask why that has three numbers, it's not done like that any more) any longer. Actually, that is not that short of a short story. -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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