[... SNIP ...]
Personally, I don't see a problem with the -CURRENT and -STABLE naming
scheme. As someone said, anybody who can CVSup (not to mention get the
sample CVSup files to work off of) yet not read the rest of the
documentation has other issues. Renaming -CURRENT to -DEV or -DEVEL would
be the equivlent of dulling all the knives in your house so that people
don't cut themselves.
As for -BETA, there isn't really a problem with this either, if you take
it apart and look at it.
>From the Hacker's Dictionary, the definition of 'beta' is as follows:
1. Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in beta'.
In the Real World, systems (hardware or software) software often go
through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta
(out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky (or
unlucky) trusted customers. 2. Anything that is new and experimental. "His
girlfriend is in beta" means that he is still testing for compatibility
and reserving judgment. 3. Flaky; dubious; suspect (since beta software is
notoriously buggy).
x.x-BETA is ... notoriously buggy. It has bugs, that's the point of the
beta - to work the bugs out. If it didn't have bugs (that we knew about),
it'd be -RELEASE. -STABLE is generally (with some execptions), more stable
than -RELEASE, because it is a -RELEASE version with both ongoing bugfixes
and (minor) new features.
A release canidate is an almost ready release. Personally, I think these
should be named GAMMA, DELTA, ... because that continues with the whole
ALPHA or BETA trend. All these designitions do is indicate various stages
of code freeze, and this is all documented places. Changing the whole
release process of something that has worked for years isn't going to help
anything, people are always going to be confused if you change it - if you
suddenly change the way this shit is named, I'm going to be confused when
4.4 comes around or whatever. Just chill, and instruct people to Read The
Fine Manual.
--------------------------------------------------
Michael R. Rudel * 734.417.4859 * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
AOL AIM: ATSTheory * Cell e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network Engineer, Pinckney Community Schools
Systems Engineer, NourDesign Corp
Principal Engineer, Michael R. Rudel Consulting
Authorized Representative, Charter Communications
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