-STABLE vs security branches, was: Flash viewer for FBSD

[Chuck Swiger]

On Mar 6, 2010, at 1:57 AM, Pongthep Kulkrisada wrote:
>> So your system is approx. 4 months old, despite you cvsup-ping?
>
> I don't know what do you mean.
> Normally, FBSD issues new STABLE RELEASE once a year (approx).
> Whenever new release or new branch is available,
> I shall do either wget iso images, or cvsup/csup and buildworld.
> The time between RELEASEs, there are patches.
> But FBSD teams stated that those patches are not well tested  
> comparing to RELEASE.
> So I do not update the system until new STABLE RELEASE is available  
> again.

Things going into -CURRENT may not be "well tested", but anything  
being merged back to -STABLE ought to be.  Humans make mistakes, but I  
can't recall more than two or maybe three significant issues over a  
decade tracking -STABLE, and these were fixed in a matter of hours.   
If you do care about this level of precision, you should be building  
to a test platform and then running sanity checks for whatever your  
machines do before upgrading production boxes, anyway.

Beyond that, however, you ought to consider tracking the security  
branch, ie, RELENG_8_0, rather than 8-STABLE aka RELENG_8, as the  
former does include recommended changes like security bugfixes, but  
avoids merging in anything which has not been "well tested".

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck