Re: FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA1 Now Available

From: Yasuhiro Kimura <yasu_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:52:32 UTC 
From: Colin Percival <cperciva@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 15.0-ALPHA1 Now Available
Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2025 10:24:06 -0700

> I'm not immediately sure if this was a bug in the code or if I broke
> things
> because of the way I built these images -- ALPHAs are a weird point
> between
> snapshots and releases since they're part of the release cycle but are
> still
> being built from the stable branch.

There are following lines in usr.sbin/bsdinstall/scripts/mirrorselect.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
_UNAME_R=`uname -r`
_UNAME_R=${_UNAME_R%-p*}

case ${_UNAME_R} in
        *-ALPHA*|*-CURRENT|*-STABLE|*-PRERELEASE)
                RELDIR="snapshots"
                ;;
        *)
                RELDIR="releases"
                ;;
esac

BSDINSTALL_DISTSITE="$MIRROR/pub/FreeBSD/${RELDIR}/`uname -m`/`uname -p`/${_UNAME_R}"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

And `git blame` annotates each line as below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000  94) _UNAME_R=`uname -r`
a382af08f8ada (Dag-Erling Smørgrav  2014-07-24 17:43:42 +0000  95) _UNAME_R=${_UNAME_R%-p*}
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000  96) 
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000  97) case ${_UNAME_R} in
2ba8b5b375edc (Glen Barber          2018-10-08 19:48:58 +0000  98)      *-ALPHA*|*-CURRENT|*-STABLE|*-PRERELEASE)
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000  99)              RELDIR="snapshots"
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 100)              ;;
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 101)      *)
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 102)              RELDIR="releases"
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 103)              ;;
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 104) esac
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 105) 
39d4f2c6f0c99 (Glen Barber          2012-12-09 22:53:53 +0000 106) BSDINSTALL_DISTSITE="$MIRROR/pub/FreeBSD/${RELDIR}/`uname -m`/`uname -p`/${_UNAME_R}"
----------------------------------------------------------------------

So bsdinstall has regarded ALPHA as snapshot since October 8, 2018
when main branch was 12.0-ALPHA10.

---
Yasuhiro Kimura