NOTE: RE@ Planning for 4.x, 5.x, and beyond...

[Garance A Drosehn]

At 3:11 PM -0600 6/20/04, Scott Long wrote:
>
>Stability in 4-STABLE has been pretty fast and loose over the years.
>Most of this is because 5-STABLE has been so long in coming, so I
>don't blame the changes that have happened.
>
>HOWEVER....
>
>I plan to start enforcing kernel and userland API and ABI stability
>once 5-STABLE happens.  This _doesn't_ mean that the branch will be
>locked down and that it's time for everyone to go off in a huff and
>claim that they won't be able to fix bugs.  What it _does_ mean is
>that changes that affect API/ABI stability and/or user experience
>will need some form of justification.  That justification might
>include POSIX compliance, security vulnerability, etc.  Adding to
>the API via added library functions, new optional program flags,
>etc, will pretty much be fair game.  The point is that there will
>be a little more review and oversight going on so that 5-STABLE
>can actually be advertised as being 'stable'.  Along with that,
>the 6-CURRENT cycle is going to be defined so that it doesn't
>take 5 years like the 5-CURRENT cycle.  These are things that
>will be heavily discussed at the DevSummit, so I encourage those
>with an opinion on this to participate in that.
>
>Scott

This is good to know.   (and therefore I am repeating it just to
put it under on a somewhat more noticeable Subject...  :-)

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =      gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad at FreeBSD.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA