Upgrade Question

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Graham Bentley wrote:

>> You've confused STABLE with RELEASE.  6.2 has not reached RELEASE.  
>> 6-STABLE is the latest "these changes worked fine in CURRENT (right 
>> now, aka 7) and have been MFCed (merged from current) so that more 
>> people can try them out", which right now corresponds to the version 
>> of FreeBSDthat  is just about to be released which also happens to be 
>> called6.2-RC1  (release candidate 1)).  When 6.2 is ready to go, a 
>> new RELEASE branch is  created (6.2-RELEASE) which only gets security 
>> fixes.
>
>
> So, if I want the 'latest version' that 'isnt a work in progress' (or 
> at  least tested
> to the point where it is know to be working correctly in the majority 
> of  scenarios)
> always use the RELEASE branches ?

Correct.

There are situations where you would *consider* -STABLE even in a 
production box, but they are rare.  Some examples:

    1) You have some brand new hardware which is only supported on 
-STABLE.  I do my best to avoid this by rarely if ever following the 
bleeding edge of hardware development, but that's not always possible.

    2) Some serious bug, which wasn't caught before, crops up with a 
piece of hardware, and the fix is only in -STABLE.

Obviously, the nearer that -STABLE is to the next release version, the 
smaller the risk that you are taking.  For example, I would have far 
fewer qualms about running 6.2-RC1 (or even any of its -BETA 
predecessors), than I would about switching to -STABLE mid-way between 
release cycles.  At the point of a release cycle starting, -STABLE will 
have had as much testing as it's ever going to (except for the release 
cycle itself).

If I did have to run -STABLE on some "production" machine, then I would 
be *very* conservative about how I upgraded it.  I would only try 
upgrading to a newer -STABLE if there was an actual problem which I 
believed would be fixed; and I would fix all security issues using 
patches, as far as possible, not by cvsup-ing.   And the second the next 
-RELEASE came along, I'd be on to it.

Of course, if you have the time and less-critical machines then running 
-STABLE is a good thing as you would be contributing to the debugging 
effort.  But you will have to be prepared to deal with things breaking 
now and again, so a familiarity with how to upgrade and downgrade (as 
well as the time) are very helpful.

hth,

--Alex

PS I'm a very conservative upgrader; I still have 5.4 on all my 
"production" boxes and am just waiting for 6.2.