Fast releases demand binary updates.. (Was: Release schedule
for 2006)
Chuck Swiger
cswiger at mac.com
Thu Dec 22 13:46:56 PST 2005
Jo Rhett wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 06:55:03PM -0500, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>>YMMV. I burned a 6.0 release from the ISO image, and did a binary upgrade on an
>>IBM ThinkPad (T.34? maybe), which worked perfectly. All of the 5.x binaries,
>>including X11, KDE, printing, Mozilla, etc worked just fine.
>
> There are no ISO for patch releases.
FreeBSD releases new .ISO images several times a year, but you've got the tools
to make .ISO images of patch releases yourself, if you want to. I don't think
that the FreeBSD project can shorten the release cycle below a month or so,
which means that patch releases are always going to be on the (b)leading edge...
> And taking systems offline for a .1
> update gets annoying fast. Dealing with all the file comparisons which are
> exactly the same except for the CVS tag takes hours for no good reason.
> Multiple many hours by hundreds of systems, and you could easily have a
> full time person just doing FreeBSD upgrades.
Using a build server as a testbed and to generate new packages or even a new
kernel + world will reduce the amount of work required, but FreeBSD does require
some level of administration and maintenance.
>> Upgrading the ports from there was somewhat annoying
>
> I don't care about ports, just the base OS. Ports we've built the
> infrastructure to handle properly, and very few ports are installed on
> production systems.
I've got firewalls with a single-digit number of ports installed, but anything
else seems to acquire 100-200 or so.
>> Now, if you want to talk about upgrading to intermediate patch releases, you've
>> got a valid point there. :-)
>
> That is exactly the point. Both .01 and .1 releases are annoying.
I'm with you on this, but suggesting solutions is more useful than just noting
the existence of problems.
--
-Chuck
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