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On behalf of NetBSD release engineering, I'd like to announce that we
have re-started the process of releasing NetBSD 4.0.  The process was
originally started back in August, with a goal of releasing by right
about now- however, in September and October, we had a huge flurry of
bug-fixing activity, which improved the quality of NetBSD-current a huge
amount (thanks to Elad Efrat for organizing the first two IRC hackathons
which closed hundreds of outstanding Problem Reports).  At the same
time, we realized that if NetBSD 4.0 was to benefit from this work, it
would take a superhuman effort from the entire project to get all these
fixes pulled up to the release branch.  It was clear that it would be
unrealistic to expect that to happen through the normal process.  We
weighed the various options, and decided that our best course of action
was to simply start the branch over once we fixed a couple more issues.

I'm happy to say that yesterday, December 1, we did just that. The
netbsd-4 branch is once again 'open for business', and we're pushing
full steam ahead to release.  Of course, this means a delay from the
original projected release date; we now expect to be able to release
NetBSD 4 in March.

A couple of minor details:  to differentiate the new branch, and new
beta process, we have designated this test as NetBSD 4.0_BETA2.  If you
have source trees from the original netbsd-4 branch, we recommend that
you delete them and check out a fresh copy with the netbsd-4 tag (see
below).  It will be a couple of days until the first test builds of the
new branch are available, but we wanted to get the announcement out as
soon as possible.

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_BETA2 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:

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

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

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

To switch your existing tree to track NetBSD-4.0_BETA2, 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_BETA2) 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_BETA2, 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.

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