Status/2024Q4: Add releng.adoc

[cperciva]

Summary

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[emaste]

Two things we might want to mention, that are not specifically related to 14.2 or 13.5 but should be reported somewhere and might benefit from the visibility afforded by the quarterly update:

• Mention that ISO images are hybrid and can be written to USB sticks as well. Probably the release notes/announcements for the next releases are more appropriate for this than here.
• Clarify/reiterate the relationship between 13.x and 14.x branches. There's often confusion in some circles over X.Y coming out after (X+1).Z. Something like "FreeBSD 13.5 will be a roll-up of minor enhancements and bug fixes for the legacy 13.x release" or so.

[ziaee]

Should we mention re-enabling visibility of the hardware notes here?

[cperciva]

In D48114#1096908, @concussious.bugzilla_runbox.com wrote:

Should we mention re-enabling visibility of the hardware notes here?

I don't think we've done anything unusual there? We always unhide the hardware notes for a release partway through the release cycle because we can't even generate them properly (i.e. with macros expanded) until we hit BETA1 and create the releng/X.Y branch.

[cperciva]

In D48114#1096906, @emaste wrote:

Two things we might want to mention, that are not specifically related to 14.2 or 13.5 but should be reported somewhere and might benefit from the visibility afforded by the quarterly update:

• Mention that ISO images are hybrid and can be written to USB sticks as well. Probably the release notes/announcements for the next releases are more appropriate for this than here.

I did amend the announcement text for 14.2, e.g. under memstick we have "Note that on most platforms the disc1 ISO image can be used instead (including on USB memory sticks)."

That said, in response to a call out on twitter I did hear from one person who had recent experience of the ISO not working on a memory stick: https://x.com/dorjechang/status/1863582127456915615

• Clarify/reiterate the relationship between 13.x and 14.x branches. There's often confusion in some circles over X.Y coming out after (X+1).Z. Something like "FreeBSD 13.5 will be a roll-up of minor enhancements and bug fixes for the legacy 13.x release" or so.

Agreed, I we should add something about 13.5 being from the legacy stable branch, and possibly about it being the final 13.x release.

website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/releng.adoc

14

Note to self: Add some wording here about 13.5 being the last release from a legacy branch.

[emaste]

That said, in response to a call out on twitter I did hear from one person who had recent experience of the ISO not working on a memory stick: https://x.com/dorjechang/status/1863582127456915615

Good to know - probably we just need to do hybrid ISOs with MBR instead of GPT. I know there were motherboards in the early EFI era that had trouble with CSM+GPT, maybe it's a similar sort of issue.

[pauamma_gundo.com]

Approved, with or without my suggestion.

website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/releng.adoc

4

Minor suggestion: since 13.5 will come after 14.2 and will be covered again in the next status report, I think it might be better to move this link to the end of the list.

[freebsd_ny-central.org]

website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/releng.adoc

14

Suggested edit, if we combine the above statements:

13.5-RELEASE is planned to be the final update for the *releng/13* branch.
It will be a roll-up of minor enhancements and bug fixes for the legacy 13.x release.

[cperciva]

Place the link to the 14.2 announcement before the link to the
upcoming 13.5 schedule. (Suggested by @pauamma_gundo.com.)

Add wording about 13.5 being the final release from a legacy branch
and thus including contrib updates and some bug fixes, but no major
new features.

[cperciva]

@salvadore Please approve so I can commit this before the end of 2024. :-)

[bofh]

website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/releng.adoc

14

Not a blocker but can we use official instead of final? final in two consecutive lines gave me a goosebump. The other final refers to an end of a branch. For newcomers it might be confusing.

[cperciva]

s/final/official/ when talking about 14.2-RELEASE to avoid making
anyone think that 14.2 will be the last FreeBSD release.

[cperciva]

website/content/en/status/report-2024-10-2024-12/releng.adoc

14

Good catch. Fixed.

[salvadore]

Approved, thanks!