Stable vs Release vs Current

[Freddie Cash]

> Have been using FreeBSD for about a year now but haven't
> understood or found a definitive answer to the
> versions/branches. Would appreciate it if someone could
> shed some light; a bit of history follows:

There are two development branches for FreeBSD: -CURRENT and -STABLE.

-CURRENT is where the majority of all new development it done.  This
development branch is what the next major release of FreeBSD will be
from.  Right now, -CURRENT is what will become FreeBSD 5.x.  The
cvs/cvsup tag for this is a period ".".

-STABLE is the everyday, production-quality development branch.  New
technology is tested in -CURRENT, then ported over to -STABLE as
needed.  Some new development occurs in this branch, but it's not a
common thing.  Right now, -STABLE is FreeBSD 4.x.  The cvs/cvsup tag
for this iis RELENG_4.

A release is nothing more than a snapshot taken from either of the
branches, put through some testing, deemed good enough for use, and
released to the world.  Right now, a release can come from either
branch.  The latest releases are 4.9 and 5.2.

When you installed 4.4, you were running 4.4-RELEASE.  When you
upgraded to 4.8, you were running 4.8-RELEASE.  And when you upgrade
to 4.9, you will be running 4.9-RELEASE.

After each release, a new branch is created to hold just security
fixes for that release.  This is known as the RELENG_X_Y branch, where
X is the major version number, and Y is the minor version number.  For
instance, there is a RELENG_4_7 for security fixes to 4.7-RELEASE,
there is a RELENG_4_8 for security fixes to 4.8-RELEASE, and there is
a RELENG_4_9 for security fixes to 4.9-RELEASE.