*BSD News Article 97317


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.caldera.com!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!newsfeed.nacamar.de!fu-berlin.de!irz401!orion.sax.de!uriah.heep!news
From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: RELENG?
Date: 7 Jun 1997 14:43:58 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
Lines: 31
Message-ID: <5nbs3e$2h6@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <5n1ft6$mk3$1@mark.ucdavis.edu> <5n3con$dpq@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.6
X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669
X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F  93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:42572

brian@shift.utell.net (Brian Somers) wrote:

> > I am ashamed to reveal my ignorance, but what does RELENG
> > stand for?
> 
> I would suspect "Release Engine".

Actually `release engineer'.  It's the branch and release tag reserved
for use by the release engineer(s).  (Release tags end up in _RELEASE,
branch tags only end in the respective number.)

Now for those who ask ``What's a release engineer, anyway?'':

That's the people behind the scene working hard doing the preparation
for each new release.  This usually involves a fair amount of stupid
work, like keeping a machine busy with `make release' every day or
every second, reviewing lotsa diffs between the main trunk and the
release branch to see whether they are appropriate (and not too
risky), testing every possible installation method and constellation
(well, almost every :), and fixing 5-to-12 bugs mainly in the
installation tools.  This usually involves Jordan (being paid for
this), for FreeBSD 2.2 Poul-Henning Kamp was also involved in the
beginning, and i took over his part later when he got too busy with
paywork.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)