[fbsd] HEADS UP: FreeBSD 5.3, 5.4, 6.0 EoLs coming soon

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Edward B. DREGER wrote:

> Perhaps work on 7 should have been delayed until 5 and 6 were able to woo 
> people away from 4 -- or at least not leave valid reasons for people wanting 
> to stay behind.  (Note that I'm more sympathetic than my tone might 
> indicate; I've also gotten into some jams from long release cycles, and know 
> what it's like.)

I think this misconstrues the trade-off.  That's like saying "Work on 5.x 
instead of 6.x".  6.x is 5.x, just significantly refined and improved.  7.x is 
6.x, just significantly refined and improved.  There are some improvements 
that are too agressive to MFC, and those are what will constitute the 
difference between 6.x and 7.0.  For example, there are a set of socket layer 
stabilization/cleanup improvements that I've not yet MFC'd, and may not do so 
(they've been in the tree for 6-7 months and appear to be good, but need a lot 
of shake-out).  But many of the changes going into 7.x sit there for a period 
of a few months to stabilize, and then go into 6.x.  Right now this MFC 
pipeline is working quite well, but it's worth keeping in mind that if we 
MFC'd all the improvements from 6.x to 5.x, it would simply be 6.x, and it 
would be easier if people switched to 6.x than have us merge all the changes. 
:-)

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge

>
> What's done is done, though.  Rather than spend undue effort on 4 and 5, 
> improving 6 and 7 is the best way to improve the newer branches... which 
> might well remove objections to jumping from 4.  i.e., I like 4.x just as 
> much as anyone else, but there's a bigger picture to consider.
>
> *shrug*
>
> As others have pointed out, if things really are "that bad", third-party
> support makes sense.  And nothing is stopping anyone from running
> NetBSD, DragonFly, or OpenBSD.  Or Solaris.  Or Linux.  Or...
>
> [ end bikeshed contribution ]
>
>
> Eddy
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