The Old Way Was Better

[Brad Knowles]

At 6:44 PM -0700 2003/09/07, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:

>    ALPHA       -- Name of the HEAD branch (trunk?).
>                    (Was: CURRENT.)
>    #-ALPHA     -- Synonym of ALPHA.
>                    (Was: #-CURRENT.)
>                    (Non-existent after HEAD moves on to #+1.)

	I don't really have any problem with renaming CURRENT to ALPHA.

>    BETA        -- Ambiguous synonym of #-BETA, but useful in context.
>                    (Was: STABLE.)
>    #-BETA      -- Name of the RELENG_# branch.
>                    (Was: #-STABLE.)
>                    (Non-existent until #.#-STABLE is created.)
>                    (Example: 4-BETA = RELENG_4)

	No, not correct.  Problem is that bugs are sometimes caught up in 
a -RELEASE, which actually won't run or even install on certain types 
of systems.  There's a reason STABLE is called that -- it's almost 
always better than the most recent RELEASE for the same line, since 
it is basically just that same RELEASE plus bug fixes.  There are 
times when this is not true (mostly when some new feature has been 
recently MFC'ed, or when a -RELEASE has been cut for CURRENT), but 
this is true far more often than not.

	We should either stick with STABLE as the name for this, or find 
something better than BETA.

>    #.#-BETA    -- Name of the RELENG_#_# branch, when beta quality.
>                    (Uncommon. Example: 5.1-BETA = RELENG_5_1)
>    #.#-STABLE  -- Name of the RELENG_#_# branch, when stable quality.
>                    (Common. Example: 4.8-STABLE = RELENG_4_8)

	Therein likes the problem.  There is no distinction between 
"beta" or "stable" quality in the system today, and it would take a 
massive change in the entire release engineering process before you 
could do that.

	Like, basically throw out all history of how work has ever been 
done (and the people who've done all that work), and start over from 
zero.


	Moreover, since there are usually extreme generational changes 
between major versions, what is really needed is a split between 
development and operational versions, and then a further break down 
of alpha/beta/stable branches at least for the operational version. 
Snapshots would be taken of operational+stable at appropriate times 
and then turned into official RELEASE versions.

>  P.S. For an example of confusing names, one need go no further than
>  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/schedule.html
>  which suggests a series of branches like this:
>    Sept  1, 2003: 5.2-BETA, general code freeze
>    Sept 15, 2003: 5.2-RC1, RELENG_5 and RELENG_5_2 branched
>    Sept 22, 2003: 5.2-RC2
>    Sept 29, 2003: 5.2-RELEASE

	You are confusing the CVS tags RELENG_5 and RELENG_5_2 with the 
human-visible terms such as 5.2-RC1, 5.2-RC2, etc....

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles at skynet.be>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

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