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Release Engineering Information

This page contains documentation about the FreeBSD release engineering process.

• Upcoming Release Schedule
• Code Freeze Status
• Charter for the Release Engineering Team
• Release Engineering Documentation
• Current Release Engineering Team
• Frequently Asked Questions

Upcoming Release Schedule

NOTE: Release dates are approximate and may be subject to schedule slippage.

• January 30, 2006 : Freeze RELENG_5 and RELENG_6

• March 20, 2006 : FreeBSD 6.1 (Todo, Schedule)

• April 3, 2006 : FreeBSD 5.5 (Schedule)

• June 12, 2006 : Freeze RELENG_6

• July 31, 2006 : FreeBSD 6.2

• October 23, 2006 : Freeze RELENG_6

• December 11, 2006 : FreeBSD 6.3

Code-Freeze Status

The following table lists the code freeze status for the major branches of the src/ subtree of the FreeBSD CVS repository. Commits to any branch listed as "frozen" must first be reviewed and approved by the relevant contact party. The status of other subtrees such as ports/, doc/, and www/ is also provided below.

Release Engineering Documentation

• FreeBSD Release Engineering
  Describes the approach used by the FreeBSD release engineering team to make production quality releases of the FreeBSD Operating System. It describes the tools available for those interested in producing customized FreeBSD releases for corporate rollouts or commercial productization.

• FreeBSD Release Engineering for Third Party Packages
  Describes the approach used by the FreeBSD release engineering team to produce a high quality package set suitable for official FreeBSD release media. This document is a work in progress, but eventually it will cover the process used to build a clean package set on the FreeBSD.org "Ports Cluster", how to configure any other set of machines as a ports cluster, how to split up the packages for the release media, and how to verify that a package set is consistent.

• FreeBSD 5-STABLE Roadmap
  Described the roadmap for the project for reaching the RELENG_5 branch. Included overall status of 5.x, what was left to be done, and tentative schedules. Note that this document is now mainly of historical interest.

• Choosing the FreeBSD Version That Is Right For You
  How to decide which version of FreeBSD is right for your needs. Topics include the releases, branches, the difference between -CURRENT and -STABLE, and the current scheduling goals of the project.

Release Engineering Team

The primary release engineering team is responsible for approving MFC requests during code freezes, setting release schedules, and all of the other responsibilities laid out in our charter.

Primary RE Team (re@FreeBSD.org) : Murray Stokely, Robert Watson, Scott Long, Doug White, Ken Smith, Hiroki Sato, Maxime Henrion form the primary release engineering decision-making group.

The platform-specific release engineering teams are responsible for building and packaging FreeBSD releases on the given platforms.

Alpha Platform REs (re-alpha@FreeBSD.org) : Murray Stokely, Robert Watson, Scott Long, Wilko Bulte

AMD64 Platform REs (re-amd64@FreeBSD.org) : David O'Brien

ia64 Platform REs (re-ia64@FreeBSD.org) : Marcel Moolenaar

i386 Platform REs (re-x86@FreeBSD.org) : Murray Stokely, Robert Watson, Scott Long

pc98 Platform REs (re-pc98@FreeBSD.org) : Takahashi Yoshihiro

PowerPC Platform REs (re-ppc@FreeBSD.org) : Peter Grehan

sparc64 Platform REs (re-sparc64@FreeBSD.org) : Jake Burkholder, Murray Stokely, Poul-Henning Kamp, Robert Watson, Scott Long, Thomas Moestl, Ken Smith, David O'Brien

The third party packages in the Ports Collection are managed by the portmgr@ team. Among many other responsibilities, the port managers keep the ports cluster running smoothly to produce binary packages.

Package Builders (portmgr@FreeBSD.org) : Kris Kennaway, Joe Marcus Clarke, Mark Linimon, Clement Laforet, Kirill Ponomarew, Erwin Lansing

Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I find the release directory or ISO images for older FreeBSD releases?

The FreeBSD Project does not maintain a centralized historical archive of old release ISO images, but there are still many options. First, a large collection of the old releases (many complete with the package sets) is at ftp://ftp-archive.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/. Second, try looking on http://mirrorlist.FreeBSD.org. If you are unable to find an FTP mirror that still contains the release you are looking for, then you can email CD-ROM vendors to see if they have any old releases available. In September 2003, we know of a case where FreeBSD 1.1 was used in a court of law to invalidate a bogus software patent. Clearly, older releases can be very important in some situations.