freebsd stable - Aug 2009 - Perennial suggestion to split freebsd-stable into version-specific lists

Howdy,

I make this suggestion every time there is a new major release coming,
maybe this time will be the one! :)

One could argue that with the 2 active stable branches that we have
now the freebsd-stable@ mailing list is already quite confusing.
Adding a third (8-STABLE) will make it much more so (arguably
confusion to the third power instead of just confusion squared), for a
lot of reasons that I think are probably obvious.

Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
list per branch. This year I even have a better suggestion for the
names, freebsd-6@, freebsd-7@, and freebsd-8@. After the flag day mail
sent to the existing -stable list can get an auto-reply explaining the
new world order.


What do you think?

Doug

-- 

    This .signature sanitized for your protection

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 8:17 PM, Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org> wrote:


> ...

>
> Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
> list per branch. This year I even have a better suggestion for the
> names, freebsd-6@, freebsd-7@, and freebsd-8@. After the flag day mail
> sent to the existing -stable list can get an auto-reply explaining the
> new world order.
>
>
> What do you think?
>
> Doug
>
>

I think , this is a very good idea , because problems of each major version
is generally different from the other ones .

Even I have the idea about using Handbook separately for each major version
. Previously I sent a message about that but it is completely ignored .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 05:17:06PM -0700, Doug Barton
wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I make this suggestion every time there is a new major release coming,
> maybe this time will be the one! :)
> 
> One could argue that with the 2 active stable branches that we have
> now the freebsd-stable@ mailing list is already quite confusing.
Is it?  I can't say I have noted any particular confusion here, especially
not any related to the fact that this list covers both 6-stable and
7-stable.   

> Adding a third (8-STABLE) will make it much more so (arguably
> confusion to the third power instead of just confusion squared), for a
> lot of reasons that I think are probably obvious.
> 
> Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
> list per branch. This year I even have a better suggestion for the
> names, freebsd-6@, freebsd-7@, and freebsd-8@. After the flag day mail
> sent to the existing -stable list can get an auto-reply explaining the
> new world order.
> 
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Doug
> 
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> 
>     This .signature sanitized for your protection
> 
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Erik Trulsson
ertr1013@student.uu.se

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:17 -0000, dougb wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I make this suggestion every time there is a new major release coming,
> maybe this time will be the one! :)
>
> One could argue that with the 2 active stable branches that we have
> now the freebsd-stable@ mailing list is already quite confusing.
> Adding a third (8-STABLE) will make it much more so (arguably
> confusion to the third power instead of just confusion squared), for a
> lot of reasons that I think are probably obvious.
>
> Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
> list per branch. This year I even have a better suggestion for the
> names, freebsd-6@, freebsd-7@, and freebsd-8@. After the flag day mail
> sent to the existing -stable list can get an auto-reply explaining the
> new world order.
>
>
> What do you think?
>
> Doug
>
I think this is a very good idea. This would also allow targeting 
specific releases directly from the documentation/release notes.

I vote on specifically:


FreeBSD-8stable
FreeBSD-8release
FreeBSD-7stable
FreeBSD-7release

and then 9 or current just stays the same obviously.

and so on....

Then at EOL drop and archive the list that coordinates.

Not to mention the benefits of tracking problems per distribution that 
this would provide.

Just some thoughts.

Best regards.

-- 

  - (2^(N-1))

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 20:17 -0000, dougb wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I make this suggestion every time there is a new major release coming,
> maybe this time will be the one! :)
>
> One could argue that with the 2 active stable branches that we have
> now the freebsd-stable@ mailing list is already quite confusing.
> Adding a third (8-STABLE) will make it much more so (arguably
> confusion to the third power instead of just confusion squared), for a
> lot of reasons that I think are probably obvious.
>
> Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
> list per branch. This year I even have a better suggestion for the
> names, freebsd-6@, freebsd-7@, and freebsd-8@. After the flag day mail
> sent to the existing -stable list can get an auto-reply explaining the
> new world order.
>
>
> What do you think?
>
> Doug
>
On second thought you could also create the FreeBSD-?stable list and 
still have then CC'd to the FreeBSD-stable list for archive purposes 
allowing people to just subscribe to one list or all of them as a group.



-- 

  - (2^(N-1))

Hi,
> Thus, my suggestion. Split what is currently freebsd-stable into one
> list per branch.
We could also THINK about whether we want more than 1 stable branch, which 
is the true case now.

Either we relese too often or older releases have a far to long lifecycle 
before reching EOL.

Recalling from memory I more than once read posting by core freebsd dev's 
stating they dislike keeping track of so many releases. That started 
with 5. 

What we really need to THINK about is getting more milestones into a 
release. Now 5 marked $SMP. 6 was a $better 5. 7 marked $this. 8 should 
cut the corners on $that. Why not having more milestones into our current 
release before the next one becomes stable. Then this problem will solve 
in near future. What's wrong with having releng_8_14 ? I recall 2.2.11 :-)

I'm not opposed more -stable mailinglists perse, but this to me seems we 
are just fighting symptons.

Cheers,
Robert