Thanks for clearing that up folks - much better. Sorry for the misunderstanding - some of the docs can be a little ambiguous. For the interest of others who are confused, this page writes it in stone: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/anoncvs.html

So a minor release happens when bugfixes reach a critical mass? Are there any actual new features in 4.3 or simply fixes on top of 4.2-RELEASE? Do features from -CURRENT get migrated in if they are deemed stable enough to ship?

+--- Ken Bolingbroke wrote: | | On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Steve Tremblett wrote: | | > I was under the impression that 4-STABLE was primarily for bugfixes | > applied to the 4.2-RELEASE codebase, and 4-CURRENT is for development | > of new features. Given that rationale, 4.3-RC should be a preliminary | > merge of CURRENT code into STABLE. The intruduction of (relatively) | > unproven code into an established as-stable-as-possible codebase | > introduces instability until after it has been tested, therefore just | > because 4.3-RC == 4-STABLE, that does not imply that 4.3-RC == stable. | | No, that's not how it works. It goes like this: | | 4.0-CURRENT -> 4.0-STABLE -> 4.1-RC -> 4.1-STABLE , etc | | There is no 4-CURRENT now. -CURRENT is currently 5.0-CURRENT. At some | further point in time, 5.0-CURRENT will become 5.0-STABLE. But you'll | never have another -CURRENT merged into 4-STABLE. | | And in the -STABLE branch, whatever the current name, the general idea is | to introduce only small changes, bugfixes, security updates, and the | like. So if you're following -STABLE at 4.2, you should be thinking of | 4.2-STABLE as (4.2-RELEASE + bugfixes). And 4.3-RC would be (4.2-STABLE + | more bugfixes). And 4.3-RELEASE will be (4.3-RC + yet more bugfixes). | | One difference is that commits are locked down in the -RC stage, so | there's less change, less chance of things breaking when the branch is in | the -RC stage. People tend to think it's a "beta" in the way Microsoft or | other vendors might do a beta of their OS, but that's not how it works | here. Given this, I feel that -RC is a safer bet than any arbitrary | -STABLE, given that -STABLE is constantly changing, with less review than | it gets in -RC. | | Ken | | | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majo...@FreeBSD.org | with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message | |

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