Where do you plan to release of 4.10 or 4.9.1? There is not info on http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html I've found some problems on my home box with 4.9 and when I've upgraded to RELENG-4 they are gone. But I'm afraid to install not-release on my work boxes. -- Sem.
> Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 07:07:47 +0300 > From: Sergey Matveychuk <sem@ciam.ru> > Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@freebsd.org > > Where do you plan to release of 4.10 or 4.9.1? > There is not info on http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html > > I've found some problems on my home box with 4.9 and when I've upgraded > to RELENG-4 they are gone. But I'm afraid to install not-release on my > work boxes.I understand your reluctance to install a non-release on your work system, but the reality is that the most stable systems are about a month AFTER a release. This makes sense if you understand how the release process really works. Releases are simply points along the STABLE branch that are declared to be releases. At various times the RE declares that it's time for a release. The STABLE branch is semi-frozen with no new features allowed until after a release. When the word goes out the tree is about to be frozen, lots of the developers who have been working on local stuff will suddenly check them back into the tree. THIS IS A BAD TIME TO RUN STABLE! (But we really appreciate those who do, as it really is important in shaking out the bugs.) In the month or so between the freeze and the release, a strong attempt is made to get everything fixed up and running well. The majority of the problems, both new and old, are fixed to the satisfaction of the RE and a release is made. (This is vastly simplified.) Now that the code is labeled "release", LOTS of people start to run it. Almost always this finds new, occasionally serious bugs that nobody reported before the release. Most of these are fixed very quickly, but it's too late for the release, so few people run this code, even though it is the least likely to have problems. Now you see why I recommend that people wait for a month after a release to update and to do it to STABLE, not release. I have no official position in FreeBSD organization and speak only for myself, not FreeBSD or my employer. Core and RE may completely think I am confused and/or wrong about this, but I see the cycle every release. And I don't have a "fix" as the cause is really human nature. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634
----- Original Message ----- From: "Sergey Matveychuk" <sem@ciam.ru> To: <stable@freebsd.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2004 10:07 PM Subject: next release> Where do you plan to release of 4.10 or 4.9.1? > There is not info on http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.htmlI believe the intended goal is to move STABLE to 5.3 ... see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/index.html for more info. SCR
oberman@es.net said:>Now you see why I recommend that people wait for a month after a release >to update and to do it to STABLE, not release.I agree wholeheartedly. I'm surprised your truth was accepted as calmly as it was. When I offered the same suggestion a few years ago I was thoroughly flamed. Here's my addition to your 1-month advice. I subscribe to FreeBSD release CDs because by the time the CDs arrive in the mail, I can safely resume updating my systems from STABLE. I suspend automatic weekly updates as soon as the first announcement of an upcoming code freeze arrives. As a side benefit, the practice allows me to give FreeBSD some tangible support and leaves me with a useful initial install tool. -- M/S 258-5 |1024-bit PGP fingerprint:|tweten@nas.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center | 41 B0 89 0A 8F 94 6C 59| (650) 604-4416 Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000| 7C 80 10 20 25 C7 2F E6|FAX: (650) 604-4377 Not an official NASA position. You can't even be certain who sent this!
Hello! On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:15:51 -0800, Dave Tweten <tweten@nas.nasa.gov> wrote:> oberman@es.net said: >>Now you see why I recommend that people wait for a month after a release >>to update and to do it to STABLE, not release. > > I agree wholeheartedly. I'm surprised your truth was accepted as calmly > as it was. When I offered the same suggestion a few years ago I was > thoroughly flamed.I think that not many developers read stable@ anymore, because development process is focused on CURRENT these days. So relative calmness is quite expected by me ;) In my opinion, RELENG_4_x is more preferrable for the use in production environment, because new features (and associated bugs) may come into the STABLE just after the end of the freeze (not waiting for the one month after it). The only exceptions are serious bugs like broken fxp driver in 4.7-RELEASE, but I think that it's better to fix those local bugs using the local patches than to export new possible bugs from the STABLE. The only problem that I see in this approach is that one must reapply all local patches after CVSupping sources (possibly modifying them according to the changes in RELENG_4_x). Sincerely, Dmitry -- Atlantis ISP, System Administrator e-mail: dmitry@atlantis.dp.ua nic-hdl: LYNX-RIPE
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, Sergey Matveychuk wrote:> Where do you plan to release of 4.10 or 4.9.1? There is not info on > http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.htmlThere are plans for at least one, and likely two, more releases on the RELENG_4 branch. And there could well be more if there is significant demand. However, a concrete schedule hasn't yet been laid down yet for when the releases will occur -- presumably one sometime in the spring/early summer, and then one sometime later in the year. Version numbers of not yet been selected, but I think "4.10" and "4.11" are more likely than "4.9.1". Murray Stokely, who has been our 4.x release engineer for the last few releases, is currently travelling, and as such we haven't really hammered out the schedule. We should put some words on the release engineering page to declare general intent, however, since the question comes up a lot.> I've found some problems on my home box with 4.9 and when I've upgraded > to RELENG-4 they are gone. But I'm afraid to install not-release on my > work boxes.As discussed elsewhere in this thread, there's an effect by which the system sees much more broad exposure following a release (many people like to install the release rather than the release candidates, needless to say), and the result is that there will inevitably be fixes that trickle in after the release as a result of problems not found in the test cycle. In general, development in the -STABLE branch is pretty conservative right now, and seems extremely stable, so it should be quite a safe update. You might want to try downloading the live CD (disc 2), booting it on your system, and doing some tests. That way you don't have to do an install to check that all your hardware probes properly, etc. Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research