Re: suggest renaming and extending the -CURRENT and -STABLE lines

On 10/10/07, Christian Baer <christian.baer_at_uni-dortmund.de> wrote:
> Hello people!
>
> Before you all bang around on my head :-) hear me out on this one. It's
> actually possible that someone has already made this suggestion and I
> haven't found that thread yet. If so, please point me in the right
> direction and I'll read up on it, before writing in this thread again.
>

There was a thread on this a few years back when we only had the
-CURRENT and -STABLE branches.  The problem at that time was that when
code was being back ported from -CURRENT to -STABLE it would break
production machines that had been updated to the latest -STABLE code.

The solution was to create the -STABLE security branches where only
security and minor fixes were applied.

> As the subject of this thread already suggests, I am referring to the
> names of the developement branches, which I (even as a computer scientist)
> consider a little "strange".
>
> If someone sees the result of RELENG_6 is called STABLE, he or she will
> problably think, this is the line where bug fixes are added, security
> problems fixed and the whole thing is meant for production systems. While
> the first two things may be true, I would not suggest RELENG_6 for
> production systems. Normally the -STABLE line works fine. But I *have*
> times in the past where a driver was changes and suddenly the system
> *didn't* work after a reboot or showed strange behaviour.
>
> What you could (and should?) use for a production system is RELENG_6_2. I
> am using that, as you can see in the header. :-) Although the handbook
> titles RELENG_6 as "staying stable...", people are warned not to use it on
> production systems (which seems strange for something called "stable")
> while RELENG_6_x isn't even mentioned.
>

The handbook needs a new section added to:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/current-stable.html

which details what the -STABLE security branches (RELENG_x_y) are to
be used for.

:
23.2.2.2 Who Needs FreeBSD-STABLE?
:
23.2.2.3 What are the FreeBSD-STABLE security branches?

If you are interested in tracking the security of the current STABLE
-RELEASE, then you should consider following the FreeBSD-STABLE
security branch.

The FreeBSD -STABLE security branches tracks only security and minor
fixes relating to the currently supported STABLE -RELEASES. No major
changes are made to these branches.

Although we endeavor to ensure that the FreeBSD-STABLE security branch
compiles and runs at all times, this cannot be guaranteed. <Re-write?>

We do not recommend that you blindly update any production servers to
FreeBSD-STABLE security branch without first thoroughly testing the
code in your development environment.

To use the -STABLE security branch you need to check out the FreeBSD
sources using the RELENG_x_y tag.

23.2.2.5 Using FreeBSD-STABLE
:

Scot