Clarification on CVS Tags

[Jud]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:00:32 -0800, "Jason Williams"
<jwilliams at courtesymortgage.com> said:
> Thanks Matthew for your explanation. You answered a lot of my questions.
> Makes sense now really.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, why would someone want to use:
> 
> RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE?
> 
> Is there some type of benefit?
> One would think that the best option for production servers is:
> 
> RELENG_4_8
> 
> THanks for your insight.

Releases are thoroughly tested through multiple release candidate stages,
but bugs occasionally slip through even there.  The security/bugfix
branch is not as widely tested, but is reliable to the extent that a few
isolated fixes shouldn't break anything and can undergo fairly thorough
testing by relatively fewer people.

There are those who will trust the thorough testing theory more than the
few-isolated-fixes theory.  Also, particular production servers may not
be running the piece of the base system in which a security hole is
found, e.g., sendmail.  Both are legitimate reasons to stick with the
release rather than the security branch.

Jud