ARRRRGH! Guys, who's breaking -STABLE's GMIRROR code?!

[Karl Denninger]

On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:59:10AM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
> 
> > Yeah, -STABLE is what you should run if you want stable code, right?
> 
> 	No. STABLE means STABLE API.
> 
> 	If you want stable code you run releases.  Between releases
> 	stable can become unstable.  Think of stable as permanent
> 	BETA code.  Changes have passed the first level of testing
> 	in current which is permanent ALPHA code.
> 
> 	Most of the time beta code is perfectly fine to run but
> 	occasionally things will go wrong.  The point of BETA code
> 	is to catch those errors that escape detection in the ALPHA
> 	stage before they make it into a release.  That is done by
> 	having a wider diversity of clients run the BETA code.
> 
> 	Occasionally you have bugs that make it through both the ALPHA
> 	and BETA stages.

Of course this assumes that -RELEASE is actually stable and fully suitable 
for production use.

As soon as you find a bug that you can't live with in -RELEASE, you have darn
few options other than to updade to -STABLE, especially if there's a commit in
the tree that appears to fix the bug in -STABLE.

Once the -RELEASE branch is taken, code updates there <STOP>.

Not even Microsoft expects people to live from release to release without bug
fixes!

In the 10 years I've been running FreeBSD in a production environment I've yet
to find a -RELEASE branch that is actually suitable for production use for the
duration between -RELEASEs; inevitably a bug that I can't live with requires
that I update the source, and what does one update to in this instance?

-STABLE.

If the project wishes to have -RELEASE be "the stable point" then bug
fixes (once FULLY tested) must be back-ported to -RELEASE - otherwise the
appearance of a bug you can't live with gives you no other real option than to
run the -STABLE track.

--
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