Release Engineering Status Report

All,

I'd like to give a status report for 4.x and 5.x for the developers and 
users who didn't attend the DevSummit this past weekend.

4.9:
The 4.9 release is likely going to be pushed back for a few weeks while
the recent instability reports are tracked down.  The target goal is two
weeks, but hopefully things can be resolved before then.  The problems
appear to stem from the recent PAE import.  The consensus reached at the
DevSummit is that PAE is a critical feature for 4.x and that removing it
isn't desirable unless the problems persist.  We encourage anyone to
help with this.

5.x:
The 5-stable roadmap document received a major overhaul yesterday.  I
encourage everyone to take a look at it at
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/index.html.
Among the highlights, KSE is progressing extremely well and is no longer
a major source of concern for 5-stable.  Stability is also at a very
good level.  However, while performance has improved in some areas, it
is not at the level that we want it to be.  Since improving performance
will likely involve changing some API's and adding short-term risk to
stability, it's looking like the 5-stable branch will be delayed until
5.3.  5.2 will be released in late Nov/early Dec and will feature the
vastly improved KSE, partially-improved network performance, optional
dynamically-linked root filesystem, and many stability fixes, along with
numerous new features.

I thank all of the developers, contributors, and users for the highly
productive summer and ask that that enthusiasm continue as we push
towards 5.2 and 5.3.

Scott
The Release Engineering Team