"J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost> writes: > On 5/14/14, 5:22 PM, Greg Troxel wrote: >> Almost. netbsd-6-1 is rooted at the place on netbsd-6 where the 6.1 >> formal release is. It gets only security fixes. netbsd-6 gets a >> larger category of fixes. >> >> The real question is the degree of safety of following a branch, in >> terms of getting good bugfixes and not getting problems. The history >> of NetBSD stable branches for a very long time is that for a normal >> use computer (not a webserver for a bank, where you want a whole >> second copy and to do exhaustive testing before upgrading the real >> one), it's safe to update along netbsd-6, rebuild and reinstall, and >> reboot. The odds of having to recover are very small. If you're >> ultraconservative, then following netbsd-6-N (for the latest N) makes >> sense. But most uses are well served by the main stable branch. > > Hi, Greg. > > (Sorry to reply to such an old post.) I trust what you're saying about > the history of the NetBSD stable branches, but that doesn't seem to > match what I read on the NetBSD release glossary and graphs page: > > http://netbsd.org/releases/release-map.html > > There it says the following about stable maintenance branches: > > What you will find on a stable branch is the last release (major > or minor) plus whatever bug fixes and enhancements which will be > going into the next minor release, pulled up from the NetBSD-current > development branch. For example, if the latest release is 6.0, the CVS > branch for it is "netbsd-6" which can be thought of as containing an > alpha version of the following 6.x releases. > > An "alpha version" does not sound stable to me. :-) Maybe the wording > should be changed to not call it an "alpha" version, or maybe a more > clear statement about the stability of the stable branch (like your > statement above) should be added? Two points: "alpha" is relative. netbsd-6 is an alpha of the next 6.Y formal release. It's less stable than the actual release, but still far more stable than almost anything else. People in general do not like to make stability claims, because things will go wrong and then some people get cranky. I was speaking in terms of the past history (although I do expect it to continue). But it would be sensible to clarify the intent. I think the www sources are available to all for checkout, so perhaps you could send a patch?
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