Re: FreeBSD 15.0-BETA4 Now Available

On Sun, 2 Nov 2025 00:10:47 +0000
Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com> wrote:

> On 11/1/25 17:04, Erichans wrote:
> > I've just upgraded from 15.0-BETA3 to 15.0-BETA4:
> > [0-0] # date -u; uname -apKU; freebsd-version -kru
> > Sat Nov  1 23:57:10 UTC 2025
> > FreeBSD q210 15.0-BETA4 FreeBSD 15.0-BETA4
> > releng/15.0-n280840-f0b1ca546eb4 GENERIC amd64 amd64 1500068 1500068
> > 15.0-BETA4
> > 15.0-BETA4
> > 15.0-BETA4
> > [1-0] #
> > 
> > However, with the previous upgrade to BETA3, I got:
> > 
> > [0-0] # date -u; uname -apKU; freebsd-version -kru
> > Sat Oct 25 12:50:05 UTC 2025
> > FreeBSD q210 15.0-BETA3 FreeBSD 15.0-BETA3
> > releng/15.0-n280758-0fc5b401bdc7 GENERIC amd64 amd64 1500068 1500068
> > 15.0-BETA3
> > 15.0-BETA3
> > 15.0-BETA3
> > 
> > I was expecting a version bump to 1500069 with BETA4
> 
> No, the __FreeBSD_version value is essentially a "what features does the
> base system have" value -- it exists mainly so that ports code can query
> it (e.g. to include patches or enable features based).  Nothing major
> changed between BETA3 and BETA4; in fact 15.0-RELEASE will probably have
> the same 1500068 value.
> -- 
> Colin Percival
> FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer
> Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid

In addition, __FreeBSD_version should be used for

  *what features does the base system "lost", and

  *what incompatible (affecting out-of-tree codes regardless ports
   or in-the-wild) changes does the base system introduced.

Maybe recent typical case would be Bug288236 [1] (corresponding review
D51340 [2]). And bump was done afterwards [3].

[1] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=288236

[2] https://reviews.freebsd.org/D51340

[3]
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/?id=ff2dc0bca3728448284d757ca983d023da7279b5

(Actual time order is a bit complexed, though.)

Regards.

-- 
Tomoaki AOKI    <junchoon@dec.sakura.ne.jp>