And then spake Postmaster@spinne.web.net as follows:
> The name is rather important. For one particular reason. Interim, or 
> Pre-release sounds like an 'official' release of sorts. To me anyway,
> virtual doesn't have the same connotation. [...]

How about 'Unofficial', then, with version numbers like 1.0u1?

> > > PS.  I would think that anything done would need to be blessed by core.
> That depends. If someone wanted, I'm sure they could set up a server and
> start serving virtual releases whether core approved or not.

Well, people *do* already put up binary snapshots on their own. From what
I've gathered there's not all that much difference between a reasonably
stable binary snapshot and an unofficial release; on the mac68k side we
have the "wormey tarballs" and the "puma snapshots", which lots of people
run because so much progress has been made since 1.0. Am I missing the
point here?

> 1. Having a structure for V-rels (I'll use that term for now) means people
> could be more self-supporting. With a well designed web page, people could
> look up known problems based on their current V-rel. This could even tie in
> to PR's, which could be fixed as of a certain V-rel.

This would be good, but keeping track of the fixed PRs in each unofficial 
release and generating release-to-release patches could get hairy.

> 2. Likewise, people could pick the right V-rel to get the new features they
> want in an update, without worrying about individual file versions.

Definitely. This I would think would be the single biggest win.

> 3. This would assist in tracking progress towards the goals set for the
> core team's next Full Release.
> 
> 4. Patches could be built for upgrading between V-rels without getting the
> full tree from scratch, which saves time and bandwidth.
> 
> 5. More people might run NetBSD with access to a more structured environment.

All good points. And people that don't want to run -current wouldn't be
stuck running something ancient.

> The way snapshots are made, and who makes them now would not change, we
> would just add more structure to the way they are made available. I can
> probably provide a Web site for doing the things mentioned above.

What about deciding when to make them? (graph the send-pr's/week, and
release them at reasonable minimums. :)

-Brian

-- 
Brian Gaeke, The Dimensional Gate Company    Internet E-Mail: <brg@dgate.org>
DGate.ORG system adminstrator / PGP 2.6.2 public key available via finger
NetBSD: Free UN*X for your {mac68k,i386,alpha,sparc,...} http://www.netbsd.org/