>As I understand it, this is because two branches of the kernel source
>are being maintained.  One has all the latest new features, both in
>the arm32-specific sections and the machine independent sections.
>This is the branch Mark compiled bsd-4444 from.
>
>Then there's another branch which only gets bugfixes, again both for
>the arm32-specific code and for the machine independent code.  This
>will eventually settle down and be labelled a "release" version.
>Unfortunately (for RiscBSD users) this branch is what the sup server
>gives you when you ask for "current".

nearly right ;-)

Ok the two branches you have described are the part of the master NetBSD
source repository.

There is the NetBSD-current trunk which is the development branch that is
continually worked on.

For each NetBSD release a new release branch is cut. Only bugs fixed etc are
added to this branch. (typically bug fixes will be applied to the trunk and
pulled up on the release branch if cleared by the release engineer.

However the bsd 4444 kernel was not compiled from NetBSD-current. The
NetBSD-current source corresponds to kernels around 4130.

The kernel team have a private CVS repository that we can all work on.
This has basically one development branch which basically matches the source
tree that I work on at home.
This repository allow other members of the kernel team to work on the kernel
and get al my latest changes etc.

Every so often I then commit all the changes applied to the kernel teams source
tree to NetBSD-current source tree.

This also allows me to test new ideas and bits of code and make test kernels
available without having to commit them to NetBSD current.

The bsd-4444 kernel was built from the kernel team tree rather than the NetBSD
one.

As soon as I get a few spare hours I will commit all the recent changes to
NetBSD-current. For some files this does mean some fiddling as there are
features in the kernel teams tree that are not part of NetBSD yet (e.g. ATAPI).


As to sup. During release engineering if you sup the 'current' release you will
get the release being engineered rather than NetBSD-current so supping current
atm will give you the 1.2 release branch. This means that during the release
engineering every one supping current will be beta testing the new release so
bug reports will relate to the release rather than current.
As soon as 1.2 is release the current distribution via sup will return to
NetBSD-current and there will be a sepaate collection for 1.2

This works fine for everything most of the time. However in the case of the
NetBSD/arm32 there have been a lot of vital changes and major development
(being a newish NetBSD port it is still evolving rapidly) so the version of the
kernel source folks can sup atm is significantly different from the test
kernels I release.

Hope this clarifies the things ;-)

Cheers,
				Mark

-- 
Mark Brinicombe				amb@physig.ph.kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate			http://www.ph.kcl.ac.uk/~amb/
Department of Physics			tel: 0171 873 2894
King's College London			fax: 0171 873 2716