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IFP4: Update the Early Adopters Guide to bring it up to the state

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of the world roughly as of the upcoming 5.2 release.

Approved by:	re (implicitly)
This commit is contained in:
Bruce A. Mah 2003-12-02 05:54:35 +00:00
parent 51c3136508
commit 7fdfe3a980
1 changed files with 90 additions and 39 deletions
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129
release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/early-adopter/article.sgml
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@ -22,6 +22,8 @@
<!ENTITY release.4x "4.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
<!ENTITY release.5x "5.<replaceable>X</replaceable>">
<!ENTITY release.4last "4.9-RELEASE">
<!ENTITY release.5branchpoint "5.3-RELEASE">
]>
@ -84,11 +86,11 @@
with) possible regressions in the newer releases.
Specifically, for more conservative users, we recommend
running &release.4x; releases (such as
4.8-RELEASE) for the near-term
&release.4last;) for the near-term
future. We feel that such users are probably best served by
upgrading to &release.5x; only after a
5-STABLE development branch has been created; this may be around
the time of 5.2-RELEASE.</para>
the time of &release.5branchpoint;.</para>
<para>(&os; &release.5x; suffers from what has been described as a
<quote>chicken and egg</quote> problem. The entire project has
@ -132,9 +134,10 @@
it. This branch has the tag <literal>RELENG_4</literal> in the
CVS repository.</para>
<para>&os; 5.0 and 5.1 are based on the CURRENT branch. These
are the first releases from this branch in over two years (the
last was &os; 4.0, in March 2000).</para>
<para>&os; 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 are based on the CURRENT branch. The
first of these releases was made after over two years of development
(prior to these, the
last release from HEAD was &os; 4.0, in March 2000).</para>
<para>At some point after the release of &os; 5.0, a
<quote>5-STABLE</quote> branch will be created in the &os;
@ -154,8 +157,8 @@
there will be
multiple releases in the &release.5x; series
before this happens; we estimate
that the 5-STABLE branch will be created sometime after
5.2-RELEASE.</para>
that the 5-STABLE branch will be created around the time of
&release.5branchpoint;.</para>
<para>More information on &os; release engineering processes can be found
on the <ulink
@ -183,28 +186,33 @@
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>SMPng: The <quote>next generation</quote> support for
SMP machines (work in progress). There is now partial
support for multiple processors to be running in the kernel
at the same time. This work is ongoing.</para>
SMP machines (work in progress).
Ongoing work aims to perform fine-grained locking of various
kernel subsystems to increase the number of threads of
execution that can be running in the kernel. More
information can be found on the
<ulink url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/smp/">FreeBSD SMP
Project</ulink> page.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>KSE: Kernel Scheduled Entities allow a single process
to have multiple kernel-level threads, similar to Scheduler
Activations. The (experimental) <filename>libkse</filename>
and <filename>libthr</filename> libraries make this
feature available to multi-threaded userland programs.</para>
Activations. The <filename>libkse</filename>
and <filename>libthr</filename> threading libraries make this
feature available to multi-threaded userland programs,
using the &man.pthread.3; API.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>New architectures: Support for the &sparc64; and ia64
architectures, in addition to the &i386;, pc98, and
<para>New architectures: Support for the sparc64, ia64, and amd64
architectures, in addition to the i386, pc98, and
alpha.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>GCC: The compiler toolchain is now based on GCC
3.2.2, rather than GCC
3.3.<replaceable>X</replaceable>, rather than GCC
2.95.<replaceable>X</replaceable>.</para>
</listitem>
@ -215,7 +223,7 @@
<listitem>
<para>GEOM: A flexible framework for transformations of disk
I/O requests. An experimental disk encryption facility has
I/O requests. The GBDE experimental disk encryption facility has
been developed based on GEOM.</para>
</listitem>
@ -237,10 +245,14 @@
<para>Cardbus: Support for Cardbus devices.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Bluetooth: Support for Bluetooth devices.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>A more comprehensive list of new features can be found in
the release notes for &os; &release.prev; and &os; &release.current;.</para>
the release notes for the various &os; &release.5x; releases.</para>
</sect1>
@ -267,7 +279,10 @@
ABIs/APIs, third-party binary device drivers will require
modifications to work correctly under &os; 5.0. There is
a possibility of more minor ABI/API changes before the
5-STABLE branch is created.</para>
5-STABLE branch is created, particularly on newer machine
architectures. In some (hopefully rare) cases,
user-visible structures may change, requiring recompiling of
applications or reinstallation of ports/packages.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@ -289,32 +304,35 @@
<listitem>
<para>A number of ports and packages do not build or do not
run correctly under &os; 5.0, whereas they did under &os;
run correctly under &os; &release.5x;, whereas they did under &os;
4-STABLE. Generally these problems are caused by compiler
toolchain changes or cleanups of header files.</para>
toolchain changes or cleanups of header files. In some
cases they are caused by changes in kernel or device
support.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Many &os; &release.5x; features are
seeing wide exposure for the first time. Many of these
features (such as SMPng) have broad impacts on the
kernel.</para>
kernel, and it may be difficult to gauge their effects on
stability and performance.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A certain amount of debugging and diagnostic code is
still in place to help track down problems in &os; 5.0's new
features. This may cause &os; 5.0 to perform more slowly
still in place to help track down problems in &os; &release.5x;'s new
features. This may cause &os; &release.5x; to perform more slowly
than 4-STABLE.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Features are only added to the 4-STABLE development
branch after a <quote>settling time</quote> in -CURRENT.
&os; 5.0 does not have the stabilizing influence of a
&os; &release.5x; does not have the stabilizing influence of a
-STABLE branch. (It is likely that the 5-STABLE development
branch will be created sometime after
5.2-RELEASE.)</para>
&release.5branchpoint;.)</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@ -330,20 +348,25 @@
<para>Because a number of these drawbacks affect system stability, the
release engineering team recommends that more conservative sites
and users stick to releases based on the 4-STABLE branch until
the &release.5x; series is more polished.</para>
the &release.5x; series is more polished. While we believe that
many initial problems with stability have been fixed, some
issues with performance are still being addressed by
works-in-progress. We also note that best common practices in
system administration call for trying operating system upgrades
in a test environment before upgrading one's production, or
<quote>mission-critical</quote> systems.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="plans-stable">
<title>Plans for the 4-STABLE Branch</title>
<para>The release of &os; 5.0 does not mean the end of the
4-STABLE branch. Indeed, &os; 4.8 was released two months after
5.0, in April 2003. There will most likely be at least one more release on
this branch, namely 4.9-RELEASE, currently scheduled for summer
2003.
A 4.10-RELEASE is a likely possibility as well.
Future releases from this branch will
<para>It is important to note that even though releases are being
made in the &release.5x; series, support for &release.4x;
releases will continue for some time.
Indeed, &os; 4.8 was released two months after
5.0, in April 2003, followed by 4.9, in October 2003.
Future releases from the 4-STABLE branch (if any) will
depend on several factors. The most important of these
is the existence and stability of the 5-STABLE branch. If
CURRENT is not sufficiently stable to allow the creation of a
@ -358,7 +381,12 @@
account user demand for future 4-STABLE releases. This demand,
however, will need to be balanced with release engineering
resources (particularly developers' time, computing resources, and mirror
archive space).</para>
archive space). We note that in general, the &os; community
(both users and developers) has shown a preference for
moving forward with new features in
the &release.5x; branch and beyond, due to the difficulty
involved in backporting (and maintaining) new functionality in
&release.4x;.</para>
<para>The &a.security-officer; will continue to support releases
made from the 4-STABLE branch in accordance with their published
@ -369,6 +397,20 @@
to security advisories and security fixes. At its discretion,
the team may support other releases for specific issues.</para>
<para>At this point, the release engineering team has no specific
plans for future releases from the 4-STABLE development branch.
It seems likely that any future releases (if
any) from this branch will be lightweight,
<quote>point</quote> releases. These will probably carry
4.9.<replaceable>X</replaceable> version numbers, to indicate
that they are not intended to provide large amount of new
functionality compared to &release.4last;. In general, these
releases will emphasize security fixes, bug fixes, and device
driver updates (particularly to accommodate new hardware easily
supported by existing drivers). Major new features (especially those
requiring infrastructure support added in &release.5x;) will
probably not be added in these releases.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="upgrade">
@ -399,12 +441,15 @@
recommended. In particular, a binary upgrade will leave
behind a number of files that are present in &os;
&release.4x; but not in &release.5x;. These obsolete
files may create some problems.</para>
files may create some problems. Examples of these files
include old C++ headers, programs moved to the Ports
Collection, or shared libraries that have moved to support
dynamically-linked root filesystem executables.</para>
<para>On the &i386; and pc98 platforms, a UserConfig utility
exists on 4-STABLE to allow boot-time configuration of ISA
devices when booting from installation media. Under &os;
5.0, this functionality has been replaced in part by the
&release.5x;, this functionality has been replaced in part by the
&man.device.hints.5; mechanism (it allows specifying the same
parameters, but with a very different interface).</para>
@ -455,8 +500,14 @@
&release.4x; executables under
&release.5x;, but this requires the
<filename>compat4x</filename> distribution to be installed.
Thus, using old ports <emphasis>may</emphasis> be
possible.</para>
Using old ports may be possible in some cases, although there
are a number of known cases of backward incompatibility. As an
example, the
<filename role="package">devel/gnomevfs2</filename>,
<filename role="package">mail/postfix</filename>, and
<filename role="package">security/cfs</filename> ports need to
be recompiled due to changes in the <literal>statfs</literal>
structure.</para>
<para>When installing or upgrading over the top of an existing
4-STABLE-based system, it is extremely important to clear out