TCP SACK backport to -STABLE

[Jon Noack]

Eli Dart wrote:
> Careful there.....one major reason I use FreeBSD is that, compared
> with the other operating systems I can use, major breakages are rare.
>
> I expect the policy that prevents you from deploying the most
> featureful OS available is there to avoid the late-night pain
> required to run the latest and greatest features in production.
>
> It would be a shame if stability were lost in a rush for new
> features.  If smarter people than I feel that SACK should be
> backported, great.  However, I for one greatly appreciate the
> commitments to stability and POLA that are so much a part of FreeBSD.

>From the Release Engineering document:
FreeBSD-CURRENT is the "bleeding-edge" of FreeBSD development where all
new changes first enter the system. FreeBSD-STABLE is the development
branch from which major releases are made. Changes go into this branch at
a different pace, and with general assumption that they have first gone
into FreeBSD-CURRENT and have been thoroughly tested by our user
community.

These types of backports happen all the time, and having another person to
share the load is not a bad thing.  Active maintenance of RELENG_4 is good
for everyone, and those interested most likely have stability as their
first priority anyway (because otherwise they wouldn't be using RELENG_4).

Regardless, the original work was done on RELENG_4 and ported to -CURRENT:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/cvs-src/2004-June/025956.html

Jon