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On behalf of the NetBSD release engineering team, I'd like to announce
the beginning of the NetBSD 4.0 release process.  NetBSD 4.0 will be
the twelfth major release of the NetBSD Operating System.

As some of you may have noticed, NetBSD 4.0_BETA was branched on
August 8, 2006 (UTC), and the beta-testing process has officially begun.
It is expected that we will remain in beta until approximately
October 1, at which time the first Release Candidate will be tagged,
and binaries and ISO images will be made available within a few days.
New release candidates will be tagged approximately every two weeks
following, to address any critical bugs which may arise.  It is anticipated
that at least three Release Candidates will be required, putting the
approximate release date of NetBSD 4.0 around December 1.
PLEASE NOTE, this is independent of the release process for NetBSD 3.1,
which is also occurring during this time.

You can check the progress and status of the beta at:
http://www.netbsd.org/releng/releng-4.html

HOW YOU CAN HELP
----------------

Please test NetBSD 4.0_BETA on your hardware!  A lot of work has
gone into getting us this far, but we don't have access to every piece
of hardware out there.  If you've used previous releases of NetBSD,
please make sure all your devices continue to work; if you have
spare machines, please test the installation procedures.  With your
help, this will be the best release of NetBSD yet!

As always, problems should be reported using send-pr, or you may
use the web submission form at:=20

http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/sendpr.cgi?gndb=3Dnetbsd

GETTING THE BETA
----------------

Getting source code via anonymous CVS:
--------------------------------------

To switch your existing tree to track NetBSD-4.0_BETA, use the "netbsd-4"
tag:

cd /usr/src
cvs update -rnetbsd-4 -dP

For more information about anonymous CVS, see
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/current/#using-anoncvs

Getting pre-built binaries:
---------------------------

The new netbsd-4 branch (which represents NetBSD 4.0_BETA) is being
periodically built by the NetBSD Foundation's autobuild cluster.
When all is working smoothly, it should be built two or three times
per week during the beta cycle.

You can access the latest autobuilds of NetBSD here:

http://releng.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/builds.cgi

and snapshots of NetBSD 4.0_BETA, in particular, can be found here:

ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/netbsd-4/

Please keep in mind that the autobuilds do fail for some platforms
occasionally, especially during the beta process.  If you don't see
a directory for your platform of choice for a given date, please try
another.  We will be keeping up to three autobuilds of NetBSD 4.0_BETA
around at any given time.

In order to make testing the beta easier, ISO images have been built
for the most recent 4.0_BETA autobuild.  They can be retrieved at:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/netbsd-4/200608230000Z/iso/ .

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