3.0.3 and 3.2 releasing

[Sascha Wildner]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:53:33 +0200, John Marino <dragonflybsd at marino.st>  
wrote:

> I suspect there are still recent kernel changes that need to be  
> backported to 3.0.3 before a release, specially this pmap/wirecount work  
> which is ongoing.  What's the intent of tagging at there? to make a  
> release at that point?

Justin wrote it:

> On 8/24/2012 03:53, Justin Sherrill wrote:
>> [...]
>> as several people have pointed out, it's overdue.

Our last release ISO (3.0.2) is now _5 months_ old and has all of the  
almost 100 issues listed in the tagging message. Just one example, no one  
can install DragonFly 3.0 on a >2TB disk using the installer. Even without  
installer, if the install goes to a AHCI attached disk (which are the  
majority, I suspect), it's limited to 2TB.

The point is (and it's been pointed out already AFAIR), minor releases are  
as good (or bad, if you will) as the previous minor release, but certainly  
not worse, as we just MFC bug fixes. So a large number of bugs fixed  
justifies rolling a new minor release. There are users which have a  
benefit from it (see >2TB disk issue).

Minor releases should be in regular intervals, if enough fixes have  
accumulated and they should not be blocked by any "show stopper" or  
"blocker" issues, as these issues are present in the previous minor  
release as well, so I don't see what's wrong with replacing an ISO that  
has bugs with a newer ISO that has fewer bugs (which is really all that we  
are arguing about here).

Can we please leave this "show stopping" to our major releases instead of  
bickering over the minor ones?

That said, I do understand your general point, of course. I just disagree  
that it applies to minor releases, too. Maybe we should stop calling it  
"releasing". How about "updating the release ISO with some fixes"? :)

Sascha