7.0-BETA1

[Oliver Fromme]

rihad <rihad at mail.ru> wrote:
 > My question was more a theoretical one: it's called BETA for some 
 > reason, otherwise it'd still be in HEAD. To me BETA means that no major 
 > architectural changes are expected in it any more, no?

That's correct.  In theory, if BETA had no bugs (and no new
ones are discovered during the beta/rc phase), the exact
same code would probably become the RELEASE.  Of course, in
practice there are always bugs.

 > > > But: TEST FIRST!
 > > 
 > > I concur with Per.

Me too.

 > > I've been running 7-CURRENT on a couple of "production"
 > > machines for some months, without any serious problems -- but these are not
 > > mission-critical machines.

I've updated a production machine from 6-stable to 7-stable
last week, without any issues.  It was even a remote update
without console access, which presented a certain risk.
But all went well (and I had backups, of course).

 > Our machine-to-be is quite mission-critical... But if I start with the 
 > latest 6.x release, it would be more difficult to migrate to 7.0 when it 
 > comes out than if I start with 7.0-BETA?.

Not necessarily.  The update from 6-stable to 7-stable was
just as easy as an update within the 6-stable branch.  It
was just the usual buildworld, kernel, mergemaster dance.
Nothing special at all, except that mergemaster took a
little longer because there were more differences, and I
had to do a few edits to the kernel config (enable the new
scheduler).  But you have to do that anyway, whether you
go for 7.x now or later.

 > Again it's named BETA for a reason, so it could be less intrusive than 
 > STABLE?..

BETA means it is on its way to the RELEASE (with some RCs
in between, i.e. release candidates).  It means that no
architectural changes are made (those usually only happen
in -current anyway), and no major new features, only fixes.

Best regards
   Oliver

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