HEADS UP: Name change committed

Max Laier max at love2party.net
Wed Nov 19 01:55:25 PST 2003


> :That get me wondering what's DragonFly's plan to have branches? Same as
> :what FreeBSD has? Often, the STABLE branch confuse many people because of
> :name of its branch, which RELENG_X_X is more stable and for production.
> :
> :Yes, I know there has handbook that explain about it, but it seems like
> :that it doesn't explain clear enough to many people as far from what I
> :have seen. :-)
> :
> :Cheers,
> :Mezz
> :
> :-- 
> :bsdforums.org 's moderator, mezz.
>
>     I'd personally rather not have branches.  I think we can do it by
>     simply using tags.  The key will be to fix the OS interfaces such that
>     they are both forwards and backwards compatible beyond the first
release.
>
> -Matt
> Matthew Dillon
> <dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I belive that having a security maintained branch is quite worth it
and should be considered. Once you announce a release, which is -
hopefully - rock stable and well crafted, users will want to get this
release with security fixes until you announce the next one. To
maintain security fixes a branch is (IMO) the easiest way.

Think of all the confuses you will run into when you find something
security related in the third revision (since release) of some API.
You will have to alter the tag for quite a few files in order to make
the fix available to users. This will look strange to the average user
and might distract from DragonFly. The normal sysadmin wants to
understand a security update in whole.

-- 
Best regards,
 Max                          mailto:max at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx







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