FreeBSD9 and the sheer number of problem reports

[Mark Linimon]

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 06:32:17PM +0700, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> > There's no such odd/even number policy with FreeBSD-- I think you're
> > thinking of another OS ;)
> > 
> maybe something got stuck in my head with the move from 4 to 5.

Yes, 5 was the Great Leap where true SMP was introduced.  In the
many-year-long development cycle, so many other things (IIRC geom
and suspend/resume, among others) that the change from 4 to 5 was
completely disruptive.  We resolved to release more often so as to
never be in that situation again.  (Granted, probably no architectural
change will ever be that sweeping again.)

There is no meaning to odd/even release numbering in FreeBSD.

> How easy was the move to 6 then?

An order of magnitude easier than the move to 5.  Although as needs
to happen with each major release, some code that had been deprecated
was dropped, and some subsystems which no one stepped up to do the
maintenance necessary for other re-architecting were dropped as well.

Each of the subsequent moves has been much the same -- a few gotchas,
but nothing like the move to 5.  This has been purely intentional.

mcl