How closely should we track 2.3 betas?

[ctirado]

Sorry for the newbie question but I was wondering how closely you folks track the 2.3 beta releases? Since there is a new one every day, do you folks upgrade every day? Every week?

For my use, 2.3 is pretty much fully working, with only 2 packages that I wouldn't mind getting back. Is there a mailing list that we can subscribe to that details what's in the snapshots? Or will announcements be made when major milestones are hit? I understand that taking time to announce features would be time taken from actual development so if the answer is no, it's not big.

Carlos

[maverick_slo]

Since by Doctor standards I live dangerous life :) I update 2-3 times in production :)

[KOM]

Just to clarify, I am not Doktornotor.  I have not seen his ugly face  ;D around lately so I must assume he is still on vacation.

[ctirado]

Ahh… To paraphrase the most interesting man in the world:

"You don't often test your firmware, but when you do, you do it in production."

Thanks for the feedback  ;)

Carlos

[David_W]

@ctirado:

Is there a mailing list that we can subscribe to that details what's in the snapshots? Or will announcements be made when major milestones are hit?

You can follow commits to the master branch of the pfsense/pfsense repository on GitHub, which is the branch currently used for 2.3-BETA. New builds are made available several times a day based on the state of the repository when the build starts.

I believe that the core of pfSense 2.3 is now feature frozen, with no plans to make major changes or add new features to the core pfSense functionality now that the Beta phase has started. The merge of the RFC 4638 client support (PPPoE MTU > 1492) that I wrote and the move from lighttpd to nginx were the last two major changes before the code was declared Beta. However, there is still testing to do, bugs to be squashed, work to do on packages and maybe other work to be done, depending on what crops up between now and release.

I stress this is just my (potentially mistaken) understanding as a third party - I can't speak for the core developers or ESF. I'm just one of many third party contributors.

Feature creep is always a danger in complex products like pfSense - there's always a temptation to cram in one more new feature, which lands up delaying release. Additional features and major changes can always wait for a future release.

[maverick_slo]

@ctirado:

Ahh… To paraphrase the most interesting man in the world:

"You don't often test your firmware, but when you do, you do it in production."

Thanks for the feedback  ;)

Carlos

Ohhh sorry KOM  :-[
I was doing like 1000 things at once and by your rather [i]sarcastic comment I thought you`re ye good ole Doc :)

[KOM]

I wasn't being sarcastic ;D  I honestly believe what I said.  My ass would be kicked out the door if I were to run beta code in production for our firewall.