There are people that can explain this much more succinctly than I, but
here's a shot....

1.5W and 1.5.1 are both upgrades from 1.5.  While they may share some
common upgrades/fixes, they are definitely not the same.  

The difference is the quality of the release.  1.5.1 is available for 
people like me (that run businesses using NetBSD) and need 'commercial'
quality while 1.5W is the 'research' quality release.

We spent quite a bit of time arguing about the release numbering scheme 
a couple of years ago and there isn't really any good alternative.  
Unless we want to reopen that can of worms, this kind of problem will 
continue to occur.

The problem is that the 1.5[A-ZZ] releases are actually precursors to 
1.6, where the 1.5.[1-9] releases are extensions to the past.  How we 
number that in a clear way just isn't an easy nut to crack.  

Unless we change the scheme so that the numbered releases identify the
goal (which would make -current 1.6W), I don't see any way around this
problem.  I'm not advocating a change, there are good reasons to go 
with the current method.  Even then, we still need to make it clear that
1.5.1 is not an upgrade compatible with 1.6W.  Of course, we then get 
into the problem of what happens when we want to release the 1.6 Beta?

Sigh :-(

Dave

Ken Wellsch wrote:
> 
> Steven Sartorius wrote:
> >
> > I'm currently running 1.5W and decided to upgrade to 1.5.1 by installing
> > from source.   This morning I grabbed the tarballs from the 1.5.1 release
> > directory and built a new (GENERIC) kernel with no problems.  When I go to
> > boot the new kernel, though, things start off normally (the kernel starts to
> > load) but before I see any boot messages the machine spontaneously reboots.
> > Never seen this before in NetBSD.  Anyone have any ideas?
> 
> 1.5W is a release of -current.  While 1.5.1 is a upgrade from 1.5.
> So you are running an "old" kernel via 1.5.1 with a new userland (-current).
> 
> Trust me, 1.5.1 is *not* an upgrade to -current (e.g. 1.5W).
> 
> Apologies this is confusing... the lettered 1.5 versions are branches
> of -current as I understand the naming scheme.
> 
> -- Ken