RELEASE vice CURRENT vice STABLE

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 3 Dec 2010 21:26:23 +0000 (UTC), JB <jb.1234abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> In case of FreeBSD, it seems (visually) that there is some mainline
> CURRENT branch repository since FreeBSD 1.0 time, from which major
> branches are started in parallel (right now there are 8.2-CURRENT
> and 9.0-CURRENT developed, if I am correct), and they end their own
> life so to speak, without affecting other major branches; but there
> were periods of sequential dvelopments as well, e.g. 5.0 thru 5.2.
> So, this is the overview, as I see it.
> 
> But, if my interpretation above is correct, then the question
> arises at what time at least some of the changes (not all, because
> some may be confined to individual branches only) from major and
> their subsequent minor branches are contributed back to
> the mainline CURRENT branch, so next major branches can start and
> build upon some common base in an organized manner ?

Basically, this is corret. There are often two branches,
aiming toward the "production release" and a "legacy
release", are developed in parallel. Let me give an
example from 4.x and 5.0 at the same time. Technology
requiring the 5 kernel infrastructure did not make the
way back to the 4.x branch, but many other things got
backported. At the time a legacy release and the current
release are supported, development takes place in both
branches to make sure the legacy release receives the
valid security updates during the support period. This
may cause sub-branches to appear during the support time
period.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/share/misc/bsd-family-tree?rev=1.141;content-type=text%2Fplain

The current diagram shows that there is development for
the upcoming release 9.0, as well as development for the
current release branch 8 (with 8.2 expected) and also
7.3, the last release of the branch 7, the legacy branch.

Those individual branches do exist for some time, but
as a release branch is out of support, the development
for this branch is stopped, it won't continue.



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