FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE and 11.2-RELEASE images fail to boot on BeagleBone Black

[Denis Polygalov]

Oh, I see. Now it makes a lot more sense for me.
Thanks for clarification. I came from Tier 1 supported
amd64 which I use in production for decade and I'm quite
sure many other people in the same situation will also be
confused. I knew that FreeBSD-NN-RELEASE is not a bleeding edge.
This is exactly what I want - not a bleeding edge but OS with
it's binary packages infrastructure that can be used for
building something *on top* of it. This is BTW is what Stefan
from neighbor thread "recreate FreeBSD 12 ARM image"
is trying to achieve. Presence of not-working RELEASE images
confuse new people a lot and the reason why these images are not
working is the lack of new people...
I'm not sure what to do in this situation - leave as is,
do not generate RELEASE images (only STABLE etc.)
or state clearly in the wiki
(ideally in the bold red font :) that the RELEASE images may
not work at all, but just at least anyone who will read this -
>  because releases
> that actually work seem like an important thing for a tier-1 platform

yes, they are. And I guess one of conditions of how to
become a Tier 1 platform is to make RELEASE images working :)

Thanks for a lot of effort for making FreeBSD running on ARM!

Regards,
Denis

On 15/07/2019 1:04 am, Ian Lepore wrote:
> On Sun, 2019-07-14 at 10:34 +0900, Denis Polygalov wrote:
>> Does FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-PINE64.img.xz works
>> out of the box or only it's bleeding edge snapshot?
> 
> Right there, I think, is the root of your confusion.  FreeBSD-NN-
> RELEASE is not bleeding edge.  In fact, it's the exact opposite of
> that, it's a moment frozen in time that will never change again, so if
> it's broken, it will be broken forever.
> 
> That's why I've talked several times in terms of "weekly snapshots" and
> "12-STABLE" which is NOT 12-RELEASE.
> 
> For any given freebsd "release" it's kinda likely, sad to say, that one
> or several or even all the arm boards are broken.  Then, the weekly
> snapshot that comes out for the corresponding -STABLE branch the week
> after the release may be fixed and work just fine.
> 
> Such is life for a tier-2 platform.  Two or three years ago it looked
> like arm was at the point where it should be a tier-1 platform, and I
> put a lot of effort into things like testing releases, because releases
> that actually work seem like an important thing for a tier-1 platform.
> Eventually it became clear to me that arm was never going to be a tier-
> 1 platform in freebsd.  We had met all the requirements as near as I
> could tell, but no matter how many times it was brought up, it just got
> ignored.  Politics or something, I guess, I dunno.  But it was 100%
> demotivating, and so now I put 0% effort into things like worrying
> about whether something-RELEASE actually works.
> 
> -- Ian
> 
> 
>