RELENG_5 vs. RELENG_5_3

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Lute Mullenix wrote:

>On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:51:13 -0600
>Nikolas Britton <freebsd at nbritton.org> insisted:
>
>{trimmed for space}
>  
>
>>YES!, Its still a tad ruff around the edges but you have to remember 
>>that FreeBSD (and the other BSDs) has very high standards when it comes 
>>to system stability, uptime is measured in years not months or days, so 
>>if they say its ready for production use then it is, also, FreeBSD 5.x 
>>as a chicken and the egg problem, it needs more people using it to work 
>>out those ruff edges, but everyone "thinks" it not "ready" so they go 
>>with 4.x thus adding to problem. Being that FreeBSD 5 is already at 5.3 
>>were sorta at the now or never point, its time for everyone to just grin
>>and bear it so we can get this show on the road.
>>
>>If you don't believe me that FreeBSD works like "running water" then 
>>have a look at this, all 50 spots are held by *BSD:
>>http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
>>    
>>
>
>I have to agree, I have been running 5.3 since it was RELEASEd, and it's
>been totally stable, the only real complaint is, that I am having some
>problems with port builds. The main one being the panel on xfce4, (sigh)
>my preferred desk top. But sound worked right out of the box, and after a
>bit of wrestling got Xorg up and running. The only time it's been down has
>been for the required reboot for the couple of security updates it's had
>so far.
>
>It would be good if people who put more demands on the OS than I do would
>use it so any other quirks can be rooted out. In the mean time I will just
>use blackbox and keep hoping for the panel on xfce4 to get fixed. On the
>other hand I have no intention of ditching FBSD or regressing to an
>earlier version. It's working and I can live with it knowing there are
>smarter people than me out there making it work better.
>  
>

Let's remember that -STABLE implies not system stability (as Nick
says, that's pretty much a 'given'), but a stable *codebase*. 5.X
has been running great for me since August 2003; but those of
us who adopted 5.X prior to the end of July had to rebuild a big
bunch of stuff when the new GCC was added to the system.
That's "unstable" ... something came into the source tree
that broke a whole bunch of other stuff.

Any committer who does something like that in RELENG_5,
now that it's been proclaimed -STABLE, is quite likely to be
crucified or smothered in penguin feathers or sold to
Microsoft or something ....

Kevin Kinsey