The individual maintainers of each architecture have the right to make a "PRE-RELEASE" of the system at any time. Come to think of it, anyone who can has that right- that is to make a pre-release.
On 2/18/12, Mark Linimon <lini...@lonesome.com> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 09:45:47PM +1000, Da Rock wrote: >> 1. Incidentally, what exactly does constitute a major release? > > That point in time where we guarantee that we break a certain degree > of backwards compatibility. (Well, that's the key component. Feature- > additions ride on top of that.) > >> 2. Is there a reason to update the numbers so quickly? > > Yes, so that we don't have to keep supporting backwards compatibility > for as long a period (see 1) -- it's a significant burden to maintain. > It's necessary to do these as we rework things like network layers for > higher performance, rework wireless to work with modern devices, and > other high-demand items. > >> 3. Could a higher bar be set to reach a major release than simply >> temporal objectives? > > Yes. We did that with 5.x, and blew it big-time. The goal of "rewrite > the entire system to support SMP in a scalable, reliable fashion" was > simply too aggressive. It led to ~5 years between major releases, and by > that time the system had changed very dramatically (SMP, suspend/resume, > IIRC GEOM, and too many other things to list). It was a huge jump and > the learning curve for upgrading was way too large. We lost userbase. > > Also, keeping 5 years between major releases led to very high developer > frustration. Why work on something when it will take 4+ years to even > see the light of day? > > This is why we moved to the time-based releases. 18 months was seen as > a compromise between all the various demands. Even so, we are almost > exactly at 24 months in practice; see the graphs I updated last month as > a result of all the recent discussion: > > http://people.freebsd.org/~linimon/schedule/ > > My own view is that 5 years between major releases is not going to happen, > due to how painful the 5.x experience was for all concerned. But as I'm > not a src committer, I'm not one of the people who will be picking the > interval for our major-branch timeline. I just try to graph it as it > goes by. > > mcl > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org" > _______________________________________________ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
