FreeBSD-7.1, BETA2 or PRERELEASE

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 03:07:32PM +0530, Masoom Shaikh wrote:
> Hi folks,
> y'day I csuped the src and built installed the kernel from RELENG_7
> I was expecting FreeBSD-BETA2 in output of `uname -a`
> it is still -PRERELEASE, is it by decision or I have to change something ?
>
> I greped /usr/src for PRERELEASE but cud not locate it. I guess release
> engineering team does that. comments ?

This question keeps coming up.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2008-October/184992.html

RELENG_7 == PRERELEASE.  There is no "BETA2" tag to follow.

No one is sure at this point where the "BETA2" string has come from
(meaning why it was idealised or why it's being used).  I'm of the
belief that it's something Ken is hand-hacking in newvers.sh before
building + making ISO releases and putting them up on the mirrors.
And I am also of the opinion that this should stop, and we should simply
name the releases PRERELEASE-YYYYMMDD to signify the build date.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |