Upgrade Question

Alex Zbyslaw xfb52 at dial.pipex.com
Wed Nov 22 04:37:34 PST 2006


Gerard Seibert wrote:

>On Tuesday November 21, 2006 at 09:08:42 (PM) illoai at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>  
>
>>RELENG_6 for whatever 6-STABLE is (6.2 right now but will soon
>>enough be moving on towards 6.3.).
>>    
>>
>
>I wasn't aware that 6.2 had been released as 'STABLE' yet.
>
>  
>
Short version: No, the OP was correct.

Long version:

You've confused STABLE with RELEASE.  6.2 has not reached RELEASE.  
6-STABLE is the latest "these changes worked fine in CURRENT (right now, 
aka 7) and have been MFCed (merged from current) so that more people can 
try them out", which right now corresponds to the version of FreeBSD 
that is just about to be released which also happens to be called 
6.2-RC1 (release candidate 1)).  When 6.2 is ready to go, a new RELEASE 
branch is created (6.2-RELEASE) which only gets security fixes.  
6-STABLE then starts tracking 6.3, just as the OP said, though no 6.3 
branch is created as such (iiuc).  6.3 tags start being created when 
enough worthwhile changes have been MFCed into 6-STABLE and the next 
release cycle is ready to start.

Depressingly, the STABLE tag makes perfect sense once you grasp the 
branch structure that FreeBSD uses, but causes no end of confusion 
otherwise.

STABLE in this context means "worked stably in the most up-to-date 
version of the source code that exists".  It does not means "stable 
enough to use on production servers or other critical environments", 
though frequently it will be - just not always, as changes which worked 
for the limited number of people who run CURRENT machines, may break in 
more diverse environments when more people running STABLE try them.

--Alex




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