FreeBSD9 and the sheer number of problem reports

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Sunday 26 February 2012 17:16:43 H wrote:
> Erich Dollansky wrote:
> >
> > On Sunday 26 February 2012 15:55:17 H wrote:
> >> Mark Felder wrote:
> >>
> >> I mean certainly -RELEASE __is__ the production release
> >
> > there is not the production release here. There are always at least
> > two.
> 
> whatever, the question is not the how many, it is the word BETA or PRE
> change to RELEASE and we should not turn this into some word-fiddling
> 
it is just logic. 10 is currently ALPHA, 8.3 is currently BETA, there might be soon a RC1 and the release.

> important is maintain the understanding for that word, because there
> are lot of not_developer_people out

What should developer do after no errors have been reported anymore in an RC? I would suggest that they release their stuff.
> 
> what seems forgotten is what is here in the second part:
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/releng/lessons-learned.html
> 
> what developers understand, mean or think does not matter, the _user_
> should be able to understand and believe in this word RELEASE,  what
> IMO is pretty clear
> 
Release means that developers either state the errors in the README or believe that there are no known errors. It does not mean that there are no more errors in there.

> so please do not argument with me or anybody else, it is merely a
> pretty fair and neutral opinion about RELEASE meaning
> 
> backed on what is stated on the page above, it seems to be the
> procedure, which eventually needs revision, because we humans always
> will fail somewhere

You can do the same as I do. I run currently a 8.3 BETA. You can encourage people to do so too to make it easier for the developers to spot as many errors as possible before the release.

Still, FreeBSD has always at least one more release out there which was hardened in real life.

If then take into account that odd numbers are known to have a higher risk of errors plus the fact that 9.0 was the first release of the new branch, I do not see a need to change much to the advantage except of putting more load onto the people who actually make it happen.

Erich