Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 09:42:26 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Cc: Ulrich =?iso-8859-1?q?Sp=F6rlein?= <uqs@spoerlein.net>, Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> Subject: Re: Schedule for releases Message-ID: <201012220942.26579.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20101222123834.GN23098@acme.spoerlein.net> References: <DB4D8AC7-25D6-4901-BBF9-77BEB956840B@cederstrand.dk> <201012220852.oBM8q2Qi039123@lurza.secnetix.de> <20101222123834.GN23098@acme.spoerlein.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wednesday, December 22, 2010 7:38:34 am Ulrich Sp=F6rlein wrote: > On Wed, 22.12.2010 at 09:52:03 +0100, Oliver Fromme wrote: > > Erik Cederstrand <erik@cederstrand.dk> wrote: > > > Den 21/12/2010 kl. 23.28 skrev Robert Watson: > > > > Looking at 7.x, I'm struck by how much it has slowed down. > > > > There's a significant user community, but not a significant > > > > developer community.=20 > > >=20 > > > Which pretty much sums up a dilemma in the development of > > > FreeBSD, I think. Developers want users to try out their new > > > shiny stuff, but users don't want to spend time upgrading. > >=20 > > For me, personally, one significant problem is that I don't > > have the resources to easily run several versions of FreeBSD > > at home. > >=20 > > I have a stable/8 installation, but I can't easily install > > another one (i.e. stable/7) at the same time, which would > > be required for testing and support. Well, I could set up > > a dual-boot environment somehow with a second disk, but > > that's time-consuming and annoying. > >=20 > > I also have to confess that my motivation to spend time > > supporting an "old" branch is somewhat low because I don't > > use that branch myself anymore for some time already. > > Probably quite a few developers are in a similar situation, > > I guess. >=20 > I think this is the core "problem". Statistics[1] show, that most > developers run some form of -CURRENT and also have some machines running > the latest -STABLE tree. So, naturally, no-one is too thrilled about > testing stuff for the pre-latest -STABLE tree. >=20 > We should not try to have two stable branches overlap for that long. We > are spreading our resources too thin here. >=20 > CURRENT+STABLE makes sense, always. CURRENT+STABLE+STABLE might be nice > for vendors, but in the end it's the developers doing the work, and they > mostly only care about the one of the STABLES. We should not delude > ourselves into thinking we can easily support two STABLE branches, > that's just not happening. Actually, CURRENT+STABLE+STABLE doesn't really work for the vendors either versus a CURRENT+STABLE where STABLE branches were created less often and lasted longer. =2D-=20 John Baldwin
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?201012220942.26579.jhb>