What is Stable

[Ken Smith]

On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 11:32:24PM -0500, AL Grant wrote:
> I am confused. Is 5.x stable now and 6.x current or is the latest 
> stable release 4.10?

Lots of people are. ;-)

5.x is not stable yet but we expect it will be after the 5.3 release.
The first BETA for 5.3 was released today.  We don't expect people
to switch from 4.X to 5.X overnight, it will most likely take people
time to make the transition.  Especially large sites.  Because of
that we will continue to support 4.X for a while.  Development
(mostly just bugfixes) will continue until 4.11 is released, at
which point development of 4.X will stop and it becomes an Errata
Branch (only *really* major bug fixes along with security fixes
will be applied).

So, there will be an overlap of a few months where we have three
active development branches.  At this point 6.X is current, 5.X
is "in transition" between being current and stable, and 4.X is
still considered stable.  After the 5.3 release it is expected
5.X will become stable.  At that point I'm not sure what to call
4.X since development won't have stopped completely but it will
still 'be there' for people who need time to make the jump to 5.X
as the new stable.

-- 
						Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith at cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |