Support for 5.x (Was: Re: What about BIND 9.3.4 in FreeBSD in base system ?)

[Remko Lodder]

On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 01:21:44PM +0000, Chris wrote:
> On 03/02/07, Julian H. Stacey <jhs at flat.berklix.net> wrote:
> think you hit the nail bang on the head, I am one such person who
> tried to submit a bug causing crashes and have found a lack of
> enthusiasm to get the bug fixed.  One thing I have noticed about 6.x
> is there is many features that 5.x doesnt have, so it looks clear
> there is lots of activity in working on new code but little activity
> in fixing bugs and working on stability.

Hello,

I feel poked by this, and it saddens me that this is the reply we
get. I know that we aren't really up to date with feedback on PR
tickets, and that a lot of tickets are stale and never looked at
(I have several of those on my name as well). The sad reason is though
that we are all busy, some of us cannot do more then we can and some
of us (the bugbusting teams) try to house keep the tickets as much
as possible, but that is not always possible with the limited resources
we have. If this bugs you enough; you are always invited to help us
making sure the ticking flow can be handled.

> 
> Example I can give is I noticed freebsd 5.4 has limited support for
> nforce 4 ide, this is year 2005 code, and there was a patch to
> complete the support so sata was supported.  Checking the same src
> file on freebsd 6.2 has all references to nforce 4 removed, the patch
> was apperently close to been commited to 6-current at the time so I
> can only guess that they got bored of trying to make it stable so
> simply removed the code to not delay 6.0 release and this explains why
> my hardware works better in 5.x then 6.x on this particular server
> using nforce4.

Releng_5 is a different working base then 6_x, things that are in 6
are not always in 5 and visa versa. Can you give me a clear example
of what was removed and what should be there so that I can have a
look at this and perhaps even implement it? If you have a ticket number
that would be even more great so that I can see the audit-trial.


> 
> In general I have noticed a decline in robustness and stability as
> freebsd release numbers go up, freebsd 4.x was very stable and its not
> hard to see why people refuse to move from it, 5.x was somewhat less
> robust but I think 5.x is more stable then 6.x, 6.x appears to have
> some compatbility problems with hardware and is more picky with what
> hardware it works well with.
> 
> If support is planning to be dropped to 5.x early in its life (only at
> .5 release) then it is dissapointing and a sign that there is no
> motivation to work on old code and old bugs.  I wonder if a paypal
> slush fund where people who use freebsd can donate to and this slush
> fund is then used to pay devs who fix pr's oldest first of course
> would be effective.

Obviously you can claim you can do better, please show us, we will
punish you after time with a commit bit and then you can help us out
all the time! Seriously though; the various development paths make
the RELENG_5 branch a development branch and 6 a stable branch.
No one ever said that 5.x was going to live long because of the
transition phase between 4.x and 6.x.

Given your feedback I expect to see you on freebsd-bugbusters
pretty soon (the mailinglist) to help clear the old PR's and
make sure everything is OK.

Yes I understand that my tone is a bit harsh, but I think the
statements above are emotional, not based on the reality though,
the teams work very hard to please everyone, but we have limited
resources and cannot do everything. It is rather easy to go pick
on the teams, but that is not somethign that will help solve the
problem. Actually helping out will, so I'd request Chris and
others to help the bugbusting teams and if possible other teams
as well, then and only then we can try to be a brave schoolkid.

Thanks.

> 
> Chris
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-- 
Kind regards,

     Remko Lodder               ** remko at elvandar.org
     FreeBSD                    ** remko at FreeBSD.org

     /* Quis custodiet ipsos custodes */