When were the stable and release branches actually created?

Tue Jun 9 22:40:45 UTC 2020

Sounds like the release branch points are on a 'best effort' and we not
spend any more time on them than what the script produces by default at
this point. Tags were moved, which destroyed data. It may be possible with
a lot of effort to get it back, but I agree with Scott that it's not worth
the hassle to find things with that level of nuance.

That also suggests trying to use the old CD images to recover a 'release
tag checkout' also is doomed to failure for similar reasons.

Warner

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 11:11 AM Scott Long <scottl at samsco.org> wrote:

> TLDR:  don’t worry about 4, 5, or 6.  Start the git repo at the 11-stable
> branch point, not at the beginning of time.  Let the old SVN repo be the
> read-only source of truth for 10.x and prior.
>
> In the CVS days, we made it a practice to “slip tags” when we wanted a new
> revision to be part of an existing branch or release.  The effect of that
> might
> be what you’re seeing for 4.10 vs 4.11.  You are correct that 5-STABLE
> wasn’t
> tagged until 5.2.  I don’t remember what happened with 6-STABLE and 6.1,
> and my email archives from that time period are lost.
>
> I’ve gone through source control switches several times at several
> companies,
> and it’s always not worth the pain to do a conversion of the old system.
> We’ve
> found that it’s best to start the new repo with little or no history, and
> leave the
> old repo as a read-only archive.  Interactive repo history is typically
> only useful
> for a few months, and after 6-12 months its use drops off rather
> exponentially.
> The effort required to curate the repo transposition is not worth it.
> Also, as someone who still regularly fouls up git repos and needs to wipe
> and
> restart them, having a smaller repo with less ancient history makes
> downloading
> and managing it easier.
>
> My recommendation is to start a new repo with HEAD as of the FreeBSD 10,
> branch point, which then tracks 12-CURRENT and all branches onwards.  That
> covers the need to do MFCs to 11-STABLE.  People that want to examine older
> history can use a read-only copy of SVN.  Given that 10.x is coming up on 8
> years old, and everything prior is obviously even older, that’s a
> reasonable
> amount of history to have in Git.
>
>
> Scott
>
>
> > On Jun 9, 2020, at 6:48 AM, Ulrich Spörlein <uqs at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >
> > Adding Scott, Ken and Peter who might have some vague recollections.
> Please
> > see below.
> >
> > On Mon, 2020-06-08 at 22:25:08 -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> >> I'm unsure of this for sure.
> >>
> >> I have a vague memory that we created the release branches when we had
> patches
> >> for security advisories. But things are fuzzy. Maybe the security
> advisories
> >> would hold a clue... Maybe the dates line up there?
> >>
> >> At the very lease, it would let you know that we created an extra level
> of dots
> >> referenced in the patches there... This will let you know if this is a
> cvs2svn
> >> screw up, or a real artifact about the quirky nature of releases and
> security
> >> patches. CVS doesn't have super great fidelity in discovering tree-wide
> events
> >> due to small date skews as files are updated one at a time, each at the
> >> then-current gettimeofday().
> >>
> >> Stable/5 was cut sometime after 5.2. That's legit timeline. 5 was smpng
> and it
> >> wasn't stable until two preview releases, and three actual releases
> into the
> >> process...
> >>
> >> Warner
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 11:36 AM Ulrich Spörlein <uqs at freebsd.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>    Hey folks
> >>
> >>    I'm investigating why the SVN repo differs from what's on the release
> >>    CVS ISOs and of course you'll shout "CVS repo copies" but it would be
> >>    really helpful if there was a record of when in time the various
> >>    branches were created. Because SVN just ain't right.
> >>
> >>    Here's the pre-SVN stable and releng branch creations in SVN:
> >>
> >>    r8869 | cvs2svn | 1995-05-30 07:50:54 +0200 (Tue, 30 May 1995) | 2
> lines
> >>       A /stable/2.0.5 (from /head:8852)
> >>    r8882 | cvs2svn | 1995-05-30 10:29:08 +0200 (Tue, 30 May 1995) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/2.0.5 (from /head:8881)
> >>    r9211 | cvs2svn | 1995-06-13 20:05:17 +0200 (Tue, 13 Jun 1995) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/2.1 (from /head:9202)
> >>    r19327 | cvs2svn | 1996-11-02 11:41:29 +0100 (Sat, 02 Nov 1996) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/2.2 (from /head:19320)
> >>    r42951 | cvs2svn | 1999-01-21 01:55:31 +0100 (Thu, 21 Jan 1999) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/3 (from /head:42948)
> >>    r57955 | cvs2svn | 2000-03-13 05:59:44 +0100 (Mon, 13 Mar 2000) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/4 (from /head:57954)
> >>    r57956 | cvs2svn | 2000-03-13 05:59:45 +0100 (Mon, 13 Mar 2000) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.4 (from /stable/4:57955)
> >>    r57960 | cvs2svn | 2000-03-13 05:59:49 +0100 (Mon, 13 Mar 2000) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.5 (from /stable/4:57955)
> >>    r63491 | cvs2svn | 2000-07-19 08:22:02 +0200 (Wed, 19 Jul 2000) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.6 (from /stable/4:63490)
> >>    r66473 | cvs2svn | 2000-09-30 04:49:38 +0200 (Sat, 30 Sep 2000) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.7 (from /stable/4:66472)
> >>    r75750 | cvs2svn | 2001-04-21 02:04:30 +0200 (Sat, 21 Apr 2001) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.3 (from /stable/4:75749)
> >>    r101416 | cvs2svn | 2002-08-06 10:24:47 +0200 (Tue, 06 Aug 2002) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.11 (from /stable/4:101415)
> >>    r101418 | cvs2svn | 2002-08-06 10:24:49 +0200 (Tue, 06 Aug 2002) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.9 (from /stable/4:101415)
> >>    r107811 | cvs2svn | 2002-12-13 07:54:34 +0100 (Fri, 13 Dec 2002) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.0 (from /head:107810)
> >>    r108855 | cvs2svn | 2003-01-07 05:28:56 +0100 (Tue, 07 Jan 2003) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.10 (from /stable/4:108854)
> >>    r111744 | cvs2svn | 2003-03-02 17:42:41 +0100 (Sun, 02 Mar 2003) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/4.8 (from /stable/4:111743)
> >>    r115436 | cvs2svn | 2003-05-31 13:28:29 +0200 (Sat, 31 May 2003) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.1 (from /head:115435)
> >>    r123193 | cvs2svn | 2003-12-07 04:02:28 +0100 (Sun, 07 Dec 2003) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.2 (from /head:123192)
> >>    r133968 | cvs2svn | 2004-08-18 18:37:05 +0200 (Wed, 18 Aug 2004) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/5 (from /head:133920)
> >>    r133969 | cvs2svn | 2004-08-18 18:37:06 +0200 (Wed, 18 Aug 2004) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.3 (from /stable/5:133968)
> >>    r133971 | cvs2svn | 2004-08-18 18:37:08 +0200 (Wed, 18 Aug 2004) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.4 (from /stable/5:133968)
> >>    r147906 | cvs2svn | 2005-07-11 06:14:43 +0200 (Mon, 11 Jul 2005) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/6 (from /head:147905)
> >>    r147907 | cvs2svn | 2005-07-11 06:14:44 +0200 (Mon, 11 Jul 2005) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/6.0 (from /stable/6:147906)
> >>    r147908 | cvs2svn | 2005-07-11 06:14:45 +0200 (Mon, 11 Jul 2005) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/6.1 (from /stable/6:147906)
> >>    r147921 | cvs2svn | 2005-07-11 06:14:58 +0200 (Mon, 11 Jul 2005) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/6.2 (from /stable/6:147906)
> >>    r147922 | cvs2svn | 2005-07-11 06:14:59 +0200 (Mon, 11 Jul 2005) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/6.3 (from /stable/6:147906)
> >>    r158462 | cvs2svn | 2006-05-12 03:09:20 +0200 (Fri, 12 May 2006) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/5.5 (from /stable/5:158461)
> >>    r172506 | cvs2svn | 2007-10-10 18:59:15 +0200 (Wed, 10 Oct 2007) | 1
> line
> >>       A /stable/7 (from /head:172505)
> >>    r172507 | cvs2svn | 2007-10-10 18:59:16 +0200 (Wed, 10 Oct 2007) | 1
> line
> >>       A /releng/7.0 (from /stable/7:172506)
> >>
> >>
> >>    I think stable/5 being created after 5.2 is what actually happened
> >>    (IIRC), but 4.3 getting created after 4.7 and 4.11 predating 4.10 and
> >>    4.8 is highly bogus.
> >>
> >>    Is there a record of when these things actually happened? Do I need
> to
> >>    trawl through newvers.sh for all of these?
> >>
> >>    For example, in the releng/4.11 branch it gets first deleted, then
> >>    r138454 brings it back on 2004-12-06 14:39:45 (that's about 2.3 years
> >>    later)
> >>
> >>    Thanks
> >>    Uli
> >
> >
> > It's fairly easy to guess the true branchpoint by looking at the size of
> > the tree. Taking 6.1 for example. SVN mentions it first in r147908 in
> > 2005, but that commit basically deletes 99% of everything and
> > accumulates a bunch of files here and there till r158179 on 2006-04-30
> > when 99% of the files are being brought back.
> >
> > Ignoring the fact that re-writing git notes is a pain in the neck, we
> > could easily munge all the previous commits together into a single
> > commit on the 2006-04-30 after the full conversion run.
> >
> > Or, as an alternative, make r147908 *not* branch off of stable/6 and keep
> > it free-dangling, but then have r158179 record stable/6 as of 2006-04-30
> > as a parent commit. That could be done in-line and not mess with the
> > iterative conversion as much.
> >
> > What I would need to know is at what stage and on which branch things
> > like newvers.sh were modified. Because for 6.1 the change of newvers.sh
> > to 6.1-RC came in with r157593 on 2006-04-08 (so not the big massive
> > commit on 2006-04-30). Later on 2006-04-30 it was then bumped to RC2 with
> > r158153.
> >
> > Scott, Ken, what was standard practice back in the day? Was there ever
> > a single file branched off to releng/x.y before the big tagging of the
> > full tree? Or can I really take the massive commit of r158179 to mean
> > the branch was tagged and all other schmutz either happened on stable/x
> > and later got its tag moved or was a repo-copy?
> >
> > Is there a way to get the dates from the email archives? Does someone
> > have a full copy of those?
> >
> > Thanks a lot
> >
> > Cheers
> > Uli
>
>