What does "Release Builds Begin" actually mean?

[neilms]

The FreeBSD procedure for development does cause me to get a bit confused at times. But my understanding is that there is always a 'Release Candidate' - and this is what, for example, FreeBSD 10 RC-5 means. Now what is puzzling is that the website says FreeBSD 10 RC-5 'Builds Begin'. My question is what does this mean? Is a kernel and world compiled? If so, why does it say builds begin which suggests an ongoing process. What specifically is built and where is it built?

So once RC-5 is available, will there be a RC-6 for FreeBSD 10 or does that depend upon the status of bugs?

 

[Beastie]

why does it say builds begin which suggests an ongoing process. What specifically is built and where is it built?

The "FreeBSD Release Engineering" document may shed some light on your questions (note the warning at the top though).

There are dedicated machines that build the world and kernel for all supported architectures and create corresponding snapshot ISO images.
(You can see snapshot images for 11.0-CURRENT in there for example.)
So yes, it is an ongoing process. It's not like someone enters a single command and *BAM* everything appears in a split second.

So once RC-5 is available, will there be a RC-6 for FreeBSD 10 or does that depend upon the status of bugs?

There won't be any more RCs as they have already started building 10.0-RELEASE on the 15th.

RCs are exactly that: release candidates. At some point of development, developers create an RC. They, and end-users, test it, find many bugs, fix them and another RC is eventually created. The process is repeated until all current problems are eliminated. When the result is satisfying, a RELEASE is created.

After 10.0 is released, an "errata" document will be published (e.g. for 9.2-RELEASE), as well as some Errata Notices, in addition to Security Advisories.

Development never stops. Both RCs and RELEASEs are just branches in the tree, i.e. a certain state of the code, created at a certain point in time, for a specific purpose (testing, bug fixing, use in production environments, etc).

 

[SirDice]

It means they've started building 10.0-RELEASE installs for all Tier 1 platforms. Once that's done they are distributed to the various mirrors. When all, important, mirrors have the new RELEASE an official announcement will be made.

So it simply means 10.0-RELEASE is imminent (unless any last minute issues pop up).