understanding freebsd development logic

[Polytropon]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:25:59 -0800, prad <prad at towardsfreedom.com> wrote:
> is the idea to make each version 'as good as possible' because it
> would still be useful for older machines? or is it that later
> versions can utilize code from the earlier versions? or is it
> something else?

I hope it doesn't sound impolite, but FreeBSD's development
process isn't tied to hardware evolution (such as it is with
nearly any Linux and of course with "Windows"). You can use
7.1 on the same hardware that ran 4.6 before, and you get a
gain of speed!

When development in 8-CURRENT is considered to be important
to the 7.x-branch, it will surely be backportet. Another reason
is that there are FreeBSD installations where the maintainer
isn't interested in updating to the "bleeding edge" point of
development, or simply can't afford this because of security
considerations. So it's important to clean bugs from systems
that are still in use, these are 6.x and 7.x at the moment,
while releases prior to these numbers have already been EOLed,
as far as I know. Of course, nothing stops you from *not*
updating an existing 5.x installation, especially when it runs
sufficiently to your needs.

With the ++ of the major release number, often new concepts
are introduced which are held back during the ++ of the minor
version number of the respective predecessor release, such
as, for example, the use of devfs for /dev, or the inclusion
of ZFS in the base system.

I'm not a developer so I'm not competent enough to go into
detail regarding your question.





-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...