CVS Tags

[George Keramidas]

On 2004-06-02 20:53, David Fuchs <david at davidfuchs.ca> wrote:
> Maybe I'm the only one confused by this, but would someone mind stating
> plainly what the difference is between the following CVS tags found at:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvs-tags.html:
>
> RELENG_4
> RELENG_4_10
> RELENG_4_10_0_RELEASE

> I assume RELENG_4_10_0_RELEASE is what the sources were tagged as at
> the time 4.10 was made an official release,

True.

> and then development toward 4.11 is made under the name RELENG_4.

True.

> If that's the case, then what is RELENG_4_10?  The page says that
> RELENG_4_10 is 'the release branch for FreeBSD-4.10, used only for
> security advisories and other critical fixes.'  Does this mean there
> are two lines of development here?

Well, yes and no.

It means that people who want to stick to the 4.10-RELEASE version
(marked, as you correctly wrote, by the RELENG_4_10_0_RELEASE tag) but
still want to grab the latest security fixes from CVSup without having
to install RELENG_4 (because, for instance, it might be already close to
a newer release, like 4.12-RELEASE)... these people can use the
RELENG_4_10 tag.

The RELENG_4_10 tag gets you a different "branch" of the source tree,
one that is updated only when there is a very good reason to do so.

So then, yes... there *are* two lines of development.  The difference
between them is that the RELENG_4 branch receives only conservative
updates to the system but RELENG_4_10 is even more conservative -- it
only getscritical security fixes.

Tested features of the kernel and userland, including new tools, new
drivers, or anything else that is deemed stable enough for -STABLE
STABLE (RELENG_4 is what we call "FreeBSD-STABLE" these days) can find
their way into the RELENG_4 branch.  Not all of them are eligible for
inclusion into a "security branch" like RELENG_4_10.

So, development does not, in fact, continue in RELENG_4_10.

- Giorgos