On Wed, Apr 14, 2004 at 01:14:45PM +0200, Pim Bliek | PingWings.nl wrote: > In computer-world unstable means: is known to crash too often, or > something similar. It sounds like it is flaky, buggy crap :).
I worked at Microsoft for 3 years. They build NT Daily. They have: * Daily Builds * IDW Builds * IDS Builds * PDC Builds * Beta Builds * RC Builds * Gold Builds * QFE Builds * Service Pack Builds Daily Builds are expected to fail. IDW Builds are about the equivalent of Debian's Experimental. IDS Builds are about the equivalent of Debian's Unstable: they are shipped to ISVs, most people are expected to run them, they mostly work, Microsoft ran www.microsoft.com off them for about 1 year before Windows 2003 shipped, at first in a very limited way, then in a big way. IDS builds are built about every 4-6 weeks, sometimes more often. An IDS Build is occasionally forked into a PDC, Beta, or RC Build. For a period of about 2 months effort is made to stabilize the fork while Daily Builds proceed, usually starting to break significantly as new things are added. Eventually an RC is selected to go Gold, however usually about 15-20 Daily's have happened, which becomes the basis for the next release. The point of all this is, all types of builds except Dailies are "mostly usuable," however all except Gold are unstable. (And Even Then... Har har har).... Unstable doesn't mean "expected to fail instantly." Unstable means "expected to fail at all." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]