Release engineering confusion

[Steve Bertrand]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan O'Connor [mailto:dan at ferrarishields.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 7:31 PM
> To: Steve Bertrand
> Cc: 'FreeBSD Questions'
> Subject: Re: Release engineering confusion
> 
> > Thank you. However, that entire page out of the handbook 
> pretty much 
> > clarifies that a production environment should *not* track either 
> > STABLE or CURRENT.
> >
> > So I'm assuming I'm best off with RELENG_6_0 etc, etc? Does anyone 
> > here actually run STABLE or CURRENT in a production 
> environment? I've 
> > personally had the most luck with RELENG_4 which is still 
> my main box, 
> > but now my curiosity has got the best of me.
> 
> Yes, production servers should track -STABLE, since it's, 
> well, stable...
> 
> -CURRENT is the development branch, so for a production 
> server, don't use that. But RELENG_6_0 is the 6.0-RELEASE 
> tag, and you'll never get any updates (bug fixes, security 
> patches, etc).
> 

This is why I am confused, because as per the handbook (20.2.2.2):

"For these reasons, we do not recommend that you blindly track
FreeBSD-STABLE, and it is particularly important that you do not update
any production servers to FreeBSD-STABLE without first thoroughly
testing the code in your development environment."

Also in there, it states that one does NOT need to follow stable to get
the latest security/bug fixes, which makes me believe that on my
production network, I should track RELENG_6_X (security/bug fix), and in
my devel lab, RELENG_6 (STABLE).

Appreciating, but 'disagreeing' with your comment that _6_0 will NOT get
the sec/bug updates from my understanding so far. It is my understanding
that _6_0 will get ALL the bug/sec updates, but nothing else because it
is *frozen*, making it preferrably the track to follow in a pure,
24/7/365 environment, because new 'tricks' or 'features' are not
introduced here.

Does that seem accurate?

Steve

> ~Dan
> 
> 
> 
>