Your 3rd and last chance to help me with vmware

[Joshua Tinnin]

On Wednesday 21 July 2004 01:14 pm, Charles Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
> On Jul 21, 2004, at 3:51 PM, Joshua Tinnin wrote:
> [ ... ]
>
> > OK, as I understand, the branches are -CURRENT and -STABLE. But I
> > often see
> > 4.10-STABLE recommended for production use. This is probably due to
> > what you
> > describe above.
>
> That's right, 4.10 is the latest -STABLE release.
>
> > What does RELEASE mean, as specifically as you can?
>
> RELEASE refers to a specific version of the system which has gone
> through the release engineering process described at:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/index.html
>
> > I'm using 5.2.1-RELEASE and am not planning on going 4.10-STABLE, as I
> > can't
> > due to hardware, and it's not a big deal as this isn't for production.
> > But
> > I'm curious ... is RELEASE supposed to be the *most* preferable
> > candidate for
> > someone considering a production OS, but just at this time, 5.x hasn't
> > settled down?
>
> End users are expected to install releases rather than daily snapshots
> from -STABLE or -CURRENT, yes.  Releases are published as .iso images
> and resold by FreeBSD distributors on CDs.
>
> > If it had settled down, would would the most preferable
> > production snapshot in 5.x-STABLE be called RELEASE?
>
> If 5.x had settled down, 5.x would now be -STABLE, and the latest
> RELEASE of 5.x (currently 5.2.1) would be the "most preferable version"
> for end-users to run.
>
> > And is this not the case now because 5.x is taking longer than it
> > should, so RELEASE is there, even if perhaps it shouldn't be?
>
> Thats about what I feel, yes.  My opinion is that the current level of
> effort to stabilize 5.x should have happened around the 5.0 to 5.1
> transition, rather than now at the 5.2 to 5.3 transition.

OK, thank you very much for clarifying, or perhaps confirming. This is also 
the way I understood it to be, and I picked 5.2.1-RELEASE because of 
hardware, but again this machine isn't for production. It does pretty well, 
but I haven't really put it through the ringer.

But the documentation is also a little confusing:

Here: 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/introduction.html#LATEST-VERSION

It says: "Briefly, -STABLE is aimed at the ISP, corporate user, or any user 
who wants stability and a minimal number of changes compared to the new (and 
possibly unstable) features of the latest -CURRENT snapshot."

And here: 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/introduction.html#STABLE

It says: "FreeBSD-STABLE is intended for Internet Service Providers and other 
commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are 
quite undesirable."

Back to the first link, it says, "At 5.3-RELEASE, the 5-STABLE branch is 
expected to be created."

I guess this is due to the current state of things, so at 5.3-RELEASE when 
5-STABLE is created, this will be easier for the new user to figure out. I 
think it might be misleading to suggest, then, that -STABLE is intended for 
ISPs and other users needing the most stable version of the software, as it 
appears to these eyes they should go with the RELEASE of the -STABLE branch. 
Or maybe that's just because right now the RELEASE isn't on a -STABLE branch. 
In any event, perhaps the documentation could be a bit more clear about this, 
but there's probably enough to do hammering out 5.x, and it does make sense 
if you read the Release Engineering section. But there isn't much explanation 
of RELEASE on the FAQ, which is why I was confused.

Anyway, thanks again for this. It will make explaining this to other people 
much easier ... I've been enthusiastic about FreeBSD since I discovered it, 
and recommending a version for those who want it will be simpler to explain 
now.

- jt