Solved [Solved] Understanding FreeBSD OS numbers

N

neolix

Hi guys,

Further to my investigation of __FreeBSD_version, I would like to get a comprehensive understanding of FreeBSD version numbers. Generally speaking the format seems to be Major.Minor-BRANCH-Patch. This nicely covers 10.0-CURRENT, 9.1-RELEASE-p2 etc. However, there are a few oddballs:
  1. How does 10.0-BETA3 fit into this neat picture?
  2. And how about 4.6.2-RELEASE or 5.2.1-RELEASE?

I would greatly appreciate it if you can point me to some FreeBSD docs, forum threads or source code that cover(s) these nuances.

P.S Is there a quick reference somewhere of all FreeBSD versions?
 
Re: Understanding FreeBSD OS numbers

neolix said:
How does 10.0-BETA3 fit into this neat picture?
Click to expand...
"Major.Minor-BRANCH", I guess? BETAs, RCs and the RELEASEs themselves are all just specific states of the code tree at a specific point in time.

neolix said:
And how about 4.6.2-RELEASE or 5.2.1-RELEASE?
Click to expand...
I understand these as exeptional "second" releases specifically made to address serious problems discovered after the "first" official release, such as security vulnerabilities, booting failures, etc. It hasn't happened in recent years (almost a decade), perhaps due to the increasing maturity of the Project (both code and management).

neolix said:
Is there a quick reference somewhere of all FreeBSD versions?
Click to expand...
You mean like a list? Check the pages related to Release Engineering:
http://www.freebsd.org/releng/
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/
 
Re: Understanding FreeBSD OS numbers

Beastie said:
neolix said:
And how about 4.6.2-RELEASE or 5.2.1-RELEASE?
Click to expand...
I understand these as exeptional "second" releases specifically made to address serious problems discovered after the "first" official release, such as security vulnerabilities, booting failures, etc.
It hasn't happened in recent years (almost a decade), perhaps due to the increasing maturity of the Project (both code and management).
Click to expand...
Yes, that's what I understood of them too. Somewhere after 7.0 the release schedule itself changed a lot too. Now it's more planned, at regular intervals you get minor releases and at bigger intervals a major release. Before they seemed to just happen when someone felt like it.
 
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