Re: Last Question On Which Release Is Best For Production

From: Simon Barner (barner_at_gmx.de)
Date: 10/01/04

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    Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 11:21:49 +0200
To: "Michael G. Goodell" <michael2043@comcast.net>

    Michael G. Goodell wrote:
    > My question is this: I currently run 5.1 (uname -a yields: 5.1-RELEASE-p17)
    > and I read at the page http://www.freebsd.org/releng/index.html it states
    > that 5.1 is Frozen and also states (not officially supported) - Does this
    > mean that I am using a release that is not supported at all any longer and I
    > should upgrade to 5.3 or will my 5.1 release still have security patches and
    > such applied to it and eventually become production worthy.

    I'd say a two-fold "no". First, it's no longer a security branch, see
    e.g. here http://www.freebsd.org/security/#adv , and 5.1 is
    definitively not production worthy. Lot's of improvements (regarding
    stability, performance and features) went into FreeBSD 5 since then.

    Just have a look at the freebsd-current mailing list archive, and see
    how busy they are, and given the fact that 5.1 was released over one
    year ago, you can imagine what has changed since then.

    > Am I just
    > missing out on functionality by sticking with 5.1 and not moving up to 5.3?
    > Moreover, *if* I choose to move to 5.3 (when it is ready for prime time) can
    > I change my cvsupfile and then rebuild my kernel and world to the new 5.3
    > release?

    Yes, but you should also rebuild all of your ports, for the following
    reasons:
     - the default threading libs changed
     - a new version of gcc was imported (bringing an (binary) incompatible c++
       mangeling scheme)

    You might also upgrade to FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6 now, which already is in a
    very good condition, and update to 5.3-RELEASE as soon as it's released
    (presumably on 17 October).

    HTH,
     Simon

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