Suggestion for release names?

[David Christensen]

On 2021-02-04 03:11, Polytropon wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Feb 2021 13:34:30 -0700, @lbutlr wrote:
>> I know the subject of user confusion on STABLE and RELEASE has come
>> up in the past, but I found out that releng is also confusing as I
>> was recently talking to someone who only ran releng versions of
>> freebsd because he thought that was an English only version of
>> Release.

>> I know this is probably futile and there's little reason to change,
>> but I think all three animus could be better.
> 
> The "problem" is that those termini technici all carry a
> well understood meaning, 

> Even worse, if you try to do a mapping of
> 
> 	RELEASE-p<n>    |
> 	RELEASE         |          | home user
> 	PRERELEASE      |          | embedded
> 	RC<n>           | is to be | desktop
> 	BETA            | used for | server
> 	ALPHA           |          | tester
> 	STABLE          |          | developer
> 	CURRENT / HEAD  |
> 
> this will be very hard and probably won't work. ;-)

I suspect that the terms chosen however many years ago have undergone 
shifts in meaning, which reduces understanding.


I think people could better deal with vocabulary if they had a better 
understanding of the FreeBSD release engineering process and its 
deliverables.


> Maybe the following documentation parts should be more prominently
> presented on the home page?
> 
> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/
> 
> https://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/
> 
> https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/3.5-RELEASE/usr/share/doc/handbook/current-stable.html
> 
> https://docs.freebsd.org/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html


I disagree, but will refrain from commenting on the FreeBSD website [1].


Michael W. Lucas in "Absolute FreeBSD", 3 e., pp. 422-427 [2], discusses 
"FreeBSD versions".  Figure 18-1 is very helpful:

-  The trunk is labeled "FreeBSD-current".  I believe this corresponds 
to -CURRENT deliverables [3].

- Two branches are shown -- "FreeBSD-stable 13" and "FreeBSD-stable 14". 
  I believe these correspond to -STABLE deliverables [4].

- There are dashed lines marked "Improvements" from the trunk to the 
branches.  I believe those that arrive at numbers -- 13.0, 13.1, 13.2, 
13.3, etc. -- correspond to -RELEASE deliverables [5] and those that do 
not correspond to patches.


I suggest adding a similar diagram to the FreeBSD website, supplemented 
with explanatory text.


David


[1] https://www.freebsd.org/

[2] https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#af3e

[3] https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/arm64/13.0-CURRENT/

[4] https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/snapshots/amd64/12.2-STABLE/

[5] https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/12.2/