FreeBSD Release Engineering Team’s Murray Stokely says that a number of the issues brought up with FreeBSD 4.9 RC2 have been resolved, and the latest release candidate (RC3) is now available for i386.
FreeBSD 4.9-RC3 for i386, Alpha Now Available
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Eugenia Loli
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I thought the next one would be final. Oh well, I guess I can wait…
Better safe than sorry i guess :o)
I have just burned my RC2 yesterday
.
I hadn’t even finished downloading RC2!
WOooWOOO!!
ok, please dont answer trolls… thats just annoying…
Can’t wait for 4.9-STABLE!!
I’ve never understood why people are in such a hurry to get new releases of FreeBSD. Each new release is just a snapshot of the STABLE tree. If you just follow the STABLE track like I’ve been doing for the past 5 years you won’t really care when a new Release is issued.
No, you are wrong. Releases are going through complex release engineering prrocess, and it is much more complex than linux one, which include a lot of regression tests and tests by users, who download and install -RCn versions.
Moreover, tracking -STABLE is bad idea, because it is development branch (see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/cutting-edge.html for more info). Good idea is to track security branches (RELENG_4_X, and RELENG_5_X), of course if your FreeBSD machine(s) are not for fun, but for production use.
You can get more information here: http://www.freebsd.org/releng/
4.x-Stable is NOT the development branch, it’s the branch for production servers.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/current-stable.html
“There are two development branches to FreeBSD: FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE.”
“What Is FreeBSD-CURRENT?
FreeBSD-CURRENT is the latest working sources for FreeBSD. This includes work in progress, experimental changes, and transitional mechanisms that might or might not be present in the next official release of the software. While many FreeBSD developers compile the FreeBSD-CURRENT source code daily, there are periods of time when the sources are not buildable. These problems are resolved as expeditiously as possible, but whether or not FreeBSD-CURRENT brings disaster or greatly desired functionality can be a matter of which exact moment you grabbed the source code in!”
“What Is FreeBSD-STABLE?
FreeBSD-STABLE is our development branch from which major releases are made. Changes go into this branch at a different pace, and with the general assumption that they have first gone into FreeBSD-CURRENT for testing. This is still a development branch, however, and this means that at any given time, the sources for FreeBSD-STABLE may or may not be suitable for any particular purpose. It is simply another engineering development track, not a resource for end-users.”
– – –
http://www.freebsd.org/releng/
Branch RELENG_4: “Development branch for 4-STABLE. Code freeze in effect until further notice, pending release of 4.9.”
Branch HEAD: “Active development branch for -CURRENT. Commits to this branch will be in 5.2-RELEASE and 5-STABLE. Sometime around the release of 5.2-RELEASE, we will branch RELENG_5 (for 5-STABLE) and this branch will then be known as 6-CURRENT.”
– – –
This is all a bit confusing, but I think that RELENG_4 is at the moment the development branch for all ‘stable’ releases, i.e. releases in series 4.x. HEAD, on the other hand, is the ‘current’ development branch and at the moment the releases in series 5.x come from this branch. However, when series 5.x is considered ‘stable’, then development in series 4.x is abandoned and after that all releases in 5.x series will come from -STABLE development branch and a new series 6.x is opened. Releases for this 6.x series will then come from -CURRENT development branch.
If I’ve misunderstood this development design, please don’t hesitate to set me straight.