Re: releng: how to follow NetBSD-6 STABLE branch

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Wed, 14 May 2014 22:55:25 +0200
    From:        =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Helge_M=FChlmeier?= 
<H_Muehlmeier%gmx.de@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <5373D83D.2030405%gmx.de@localhost>

  | If I understand the terminology right there are maintenance branches 
  | like netbsd-6.1 which will be forked from netbsd-6 if the releng-team
  | think it is time for it...  netbsd-6 should be the same on that time 
  | stamp  (tag) but will differ in future because netbsd-6 will get  minor 
  | features too (not only security fixes).
  | 
  | Am I right?

Yes (except not "will be forked" but "was forked")

  | I want to follow the most recent version of netbsd-6 on my computer.

That's fine, and that's what you're doing.

  | I guess there should be a NetBSD-6_STABLE if I build a distribution and 
  | kernel from those source (tag = netbsd-6).

Not "should", but "could" yes .. it just happens that that naming isn't
what is used.   There's never anything (as a system release version) called
NetBSD 6, that's too imprecise, it is always 6.x or 6.x.y or 6.x_LABEL.

To re-quote something from your message above:

  | netbsd-6 should be the same on that time  stamp  (tag) but will differ in
  | future

At the point of  the fork, if you had fetched netbsd-6 at that instant,
you'd have exactly the same thing as NetBSD 6.1 - that's exactly what you
(correctly) surmised would happen.

From that point onwards, netbsd-6 generates systems called NetBSD 6.1_STABLE
to indicate that it is the stable release, after NetBSD 6.1 (before 6.1
was forked, it was NetBSD 6.0_STABLE - the stable release after NetBSD 6.0).

When 6.2 is forked, systems from the netbsd-6 branch will be NetBSD 6.2_STABLE

There is nothing broken here, you just guessed incorrectly as to what the
system version would be called.

kre

ps: if you wanted to stick with NetBSD 6.1 (not get stuff that is going
in 6.2 but only the critical fixes) then you'd checkout netbsd-6-1 and
the system would call itself NetBSD 6.1_PATCH (patched version of 6.1)
which then becomes (or became) 6.1.1 6.1.2 ... as required.