freeBSD 5.5 Prerelease ( 5.4 stable )

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:00:05 +0100
> From: Bartosz Fabianowski <freebsd at chillt.de>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> 
> > but i need a working OS, not a bata !
> 
> If you don't like using a beta (nothing wrong with that), you definitely 
> should not be using -stable either. There are even less promises 
> regarding the reliability and quality of -stable than there are of a 
> beta. After all, during the prerelease and beta cycles, the tree is 
> getting in shape for a release and there is a focus on fixing as many 
> little nits as possible. In between releases, bigger MFCs might hit 
> -stable from time to time and make it less reliable.

Since there are no promises of ANYTHING with FreeBSD, I don't see how
-stable could come with fewer. :-)

The reality of the situation is that pre-release and betas are often
less than most systems marked "stable" because of the release cycle.

Developers tend to delay MFCing new features so that they can get as
much testing as possible in -current. This is good, but it means that
after a release you see a number of bug fixes as no amount of testing in
current or stable will find a bug as fast as when it's in a release.

This loosely means (stability on the Y axis and time on the X):

        **** ** ********* *** *****  ****
      **    *  *         *   *     **    **
***  *                                     *              ******  *
|  **                                       *         ****  |   **
|                                           **     ***      |
|                                           * *****         |
|                                           **              |
Release                Stable                 pre-rel. Beta Release

Note that this is the stability of the stable branch and not the actual
release which is usually a bit more stable than the -stable branch at
the time of release as they diverge a bit just before a release.

The big drop comes just before the code freeze when developers start
merging in new features from current. Running pre-release software is
always a bit dicey. Beta will have most of the problems encountered
fixed and quality will improve a bit before release. There is also a
small drop right after release when a couple of new features that
couldn't be made stable are MFCed again.

Of course, every release is different, but the cycle has repeated pretty
consistently since at least 3.3 when I first started tracking
-stable. On systems that I want to be reliable, I tend to run -stable,
but I monitor the mailing list and update between releases to a date
about a week in the past so I can be pretty sure that -stable really
is. 

> 
> So, while you are getting confused by the branch name changing, you 
> should also rethink whether you want -stable at all. It really seems 
> like you should be aiming for RELENG_5_4 (and then RELENG_5_5 once 5.5 
> is out) instead.
> 
> - Bartosz
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