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Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 20:30:16 -0600 (MDT)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
Subject: Re: Noob question ....
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Cc: "William A. Mahaffey III" <wam@hiwaay.net>,
 FreeBSD Questions !!!! <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
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On Thu, 16 Oct 2014, Polytropon wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:50:59 -0500, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
>> *Aaaaaaaaack* !!!! That clarifies an important misunderstanding for me
>> .... I thought STABLE would be more/most stable, maybe a refinement on
>> RELEASE .... Thx for the clarification.
>
> The name -STABLE is to be understood as "more stable than
> -CURRENT", because when you check out the development branch,
> it _might_ happen that it misbehaves or that it won't even
> compile; it can also happen that an experimental feature
> in -CURRENT is being removed later on.

-STABLE means the ABI is stable.  So applications compiled for 9.1 will 
still run on 9-STABLE, and vice versa.

In effect, the -STABLE branch ends up being -RELEASE plus bug fixes and 
new features, the continued development after a release.  Where a 
-RELEASE is a snapshot in time, -STABLE is the latest version of that 
branch.