Re: propose repo nomenclature

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> writes:

> On Mon, Mar 04, 2019 at 06:04:39PM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
>> 8.0_RELEASE and 8.0_STABLE probably really should have the same ABI.
>> But that should not be about CHECK_OSABI, which is about internal
>> interfaces.   I am not sure where it is written down or if, but the
>> whole osabi package is confusing.   The problem is that we don't have
>> version counters for each micro part of a possible system ABI.   So
>> 8.0_STABLE at one point and 8.0_STABLE at another point are not
>> necessarily compatible in the pkgtools/osabi sense.
>
> If they are not, something bad happened (and it is a bug). After very
> bad experiences during the 7.0 -> 7.1 time frame, releng is now using a
> much more strict pullup policy. As we have dropped the tiny branches,
> we can not afford any ABI incompatibilities.

Understood and much appreciated.

> This rule basically was always there, but now is spelled out more explicitly
> in the pullup rules and also (hopefully) will be enforced strictly.

yay

> So there is no point for pkg_add or osabi to treat any member of the
> netbsd-8 family differently. Same should apply later to the netbsd-9 or
> newer branch. Unfortunately it was not true fur netbsd-7 prior to 7.1,
> but in a few months this should be a relict of the past ;-)
>
> Martin

For the basic ABI notion, fully agreed.

But the osabi package is about things like lsof and kmem grovelers.
Are you saying that not only would the normal ABI be stable, but the
internal ABIs that are normally not supposed to be used?

If so, we should perhaps change the whole notion to be (for branches),
basically some set of values leading up to the first release (maintained
how?), and then all succeeding forms of netbsd-8 being considered
equivalent.