What is Stable

[Peter Jeremy]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 12:54:00PM +0200, Pawel Malachowski wrote:
>5.x is actually frozen, I mean, there is no development branch for 5.x.
>There are some minor fixes being commited to HEAD, but they won't be in
>RELENG_5 because of code freeze.

Depending on how important the fixes are, they may wind up in RELENG_5
and maybe 5.3.  All you need to do is convince re@ that the change is
important enough to go in.

> Will these fixes be incorporated to RELENG_5 after 5.3-RELEASE is out?

Maybe - if they are relevant to RELENG_5.

> 5.3R schedule says about October.
>Isn't it increasing a risk of `fixed-in-current-long-time-ago-but-
>-forgotten-MFC' hell? ;)

According to the schedule, 5.3 is about 6 weeks off.  It's normal to
freeze the RELENG_n branch whilst RELENG_n_m is being prepared.  This
makes it much easier to move the RELENG_n_m tags if necessary.

Note that there hasn't been any excuse for forgetting MFC's for several
years now:  The "MFC after" tags in commit messages automatically generate
reminder e-mails to the committer.

>Wasn't it better to branch both RELENG_5 (open) and RELENG_5_3 (frozen)
>and allow developers to put changes in RELENG_5 after playing in HEAD
>as usual, without the need of waiting to October?

Important fixes can still be MFC'd as long as re@ agrees.  This sort
of issue seems to arise just before every release - code freezes are
always flagged well in advance, giving people plenty of time to
commit general changes.

Peter