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.
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