release-engineering branches (was Re: kernel panic in if_ppp.c)
Jon Noack
noackjr at alumni.rice.edu
Thu Apr 15 13:05:39 PDT 2004
On 4/15/2004 2:13 PM, Robert Watson wrote:
> Currently, this fix doesn't fit the charter for the RELENG_5_2 branch,
> which is focussed on security-only fixes. However, there's an on-going
> discussion of broadening the scope of the current security branches to
> release-engineering branches. If this happens, I'll merge it to that
> branch also (feel free to remind me if I forget :-).
This is a fabulous idea. I know it means a little more work, but I can
think of several situations where I had to manually patch a release
branch (or run -STABLE or -CURRENT) because I needed a simple bugfix.
Broadening the scope to make them release-engineering branches would
have saved me from this extra work. I think it increases the
"durability" of releases, allowing people to more strictly use just
releases. As a person responsible for FreeBSD machines in production, I
find this highly desirable. I can see definite complications (like the
MFC rules for the branch -- recent changes in commit permissions to
require an "Approved by:" line should help, though), but my opinion is
that this is worthwhile.
Jon Noack
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