This is equivalent to what Larry McVoy calls "an LOD" or "Line Of Developement".

The problem with CVS is reconciliation of lines of developement with the HEAD branch. To make this work, you have to consider each LOD as a container for historical LODs, and the winning code for any given problem would propagate up to the "HEAD" -- the top level in a hierarchy.

The CVS model is HEAD-centric, which means that there is always "One True FreeBSD".

From a Physics standpoint, you could see multiple LODs as an uncertainty wave that only collapses to particular code when an observer named "-RELEASE" looks at it. 8-).

It's actually appropriate for -arch, I think. Our tools constrain what we can implement more than our thinking does. For example, the linker set code in FreeBSD wasn't possible until it was supported by our tools; now we could not imagine going through the contortions not having them would require. I would even posit that some of the problems that are solved today using linker sets would not have been permitted to be solved, if it meant adding convoluted and difficult for a layman to understand code to accomplish the same ends.

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