Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 09:11:36 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com> To: "'Chad R. Larson'" <chad@DCFinc.com>, Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> Cc: "juha@saarinen.org" <juha@saarinen.org>, "joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us" <joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us>, "stable@FreeBSD.ORG" <stable@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Staying *really stable* in FreeBSD Message-ID: <01C0FEE9.2A9644A0.wmoran@iowna.com>
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On Tuesday, June 26, 2001 5:07 PM, Chad R. Larson [SMTP:chad@DCFinc.com] wrote: > On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 02:34:03AM -0700, Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > 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 Hmmm ... I just realized that that paragraph had already changed. Did I miss some of the excitement? > > 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. Apparently this has been done. While the change to the text is not "substantial", I think it does serve to clarify the situation very well. > Actually, -CURRENT is "development" and -STABLE is "QA/BETA" and > -RELEASE is what most folks would think of as "stable". So, why > don't we name them like that? I wouldn't have a problem with > -DEVEL, -BETA, -RELEASE, and perhaps putting -STABLE on the new > RELENG_X_Y branch. If anyone is taking votes, I disagree. The -STABLE branch is not -BETA in any way that I can see. It's simply a low key development branch. Changes are tested in -CURRENT before being merged into -STABLE, therefore there's nothing -BETA about it. The addition of the RELENG_X_Y branch should improve the situation for people who are paranoid and like to upgrade. Let's not make the problem worse, though. If you try to give people a way to "just fix it without paying any real attention to what's going on" you're going to have a lot of people mad at you if things don't go perfectly. This "I shouldn't have to make sure the software is safe, that's the developer's job" mentality is one of the main reasons that systems get cracked in the first place. Even Microsoft announced that there was a terrible hole in IIS that should be patched immediately, yet I wonder how many IIS installations still have this hole unpatched?? -Bill To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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