Hitchhiker's Guide to Openbsd

5.1 - OpenBSD's Flavors
There are three "flavors" of OpenBSD: 
●
-release: The version of OpenBSD shipped every six months on CD. 
●
-stable: Release, plus patches considered critical to security and reliability. 
●
-current: Where new development work is presently being done, and eventually, it will turn into 
the next release. 
Graphically, the development of these flavors looks something like this: 
,------o-----------o----X 4.6 
Stable
| . .
| . ,------o---------o----X 4.7 
Stable
| . | . .
| . | . ,----o----------o--> 4.8 
Stable
| . | . | . .
| . | . | . ,-----o--> 4.9 
Stable
| . | . | . | .
| . | . | . | .
-->4.6Rel----->4.7Rel----->4.8Rel----->4.9Rel----> Current 
Time --->
-Current is where active development work is done, and eventually, it will turn into the next -release of 
OpenBSD. Every six months, when a new version of OpenBSD is released, -current is tagged, and 
becomes -release: a frozen point in the history of the source tree. Each -release is never changed; it is 
what is on the 
CDs
 and 
FTP servers
. 
-Stable is based on -release, and is a branch from the main development path of OpenBSD. When very 
important fixes are made to -current, they are "back ported" (merged) into the -stable branches; because 
of this, -stable is also known as the "patch branch." In the above illustration, the vertical dotted lines 
denote bug fixes being incorporated into the -stable branches. You will also note that in the above 
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html (2 of 26)9/4/2011 10:02:02 AM

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5 - Building the System from Source
example, the 4.6-stable branch came to an end with 4.8-release, and the 4.7-stable branch came to an 
end with 4.9-release -- old releases are typically supported up to two releases back. It takes resources 
and time to support older versions, while we might like to provide ongoing support for old releases, we 
would rather focus on new features. The -stable branch is, by design, very easy to build from -release of 
the same version (i.e., going from 4.9-release to 4.9-stable). 
The -stable branch is -release plus patches found on the 
errata page
. The operation of -stable is the same 
as the -release it is based on. If the 
man pages
 have to change, it probably won't go into -stable. In other 
words, new device support and new features will NOT be added to -stable. 
It is worth pointing out that the name "-stable" is not intended to imply that -current is unreliable or less 
robust in production. Rather, the APIs (how the programs talk to the OS) and features of -current are 
changing and evolving, whereas the operation and APIs of -stable are the same as the release it is based 
on, so you shouldn't have to relearn features of your system or change any configuration files, or have 
any problem adding additional applications to your system. 
In fact, as our hope is to continually improve OpenBSD, the goal is that -current should be more 
reliable, more secure, and of course, have greater features than -stable. Put bluntly, the "best" version of 
OpenBSD is -current. 
Most users should be running either -stable or -release. That being said, many people do run -current on 
production systems, and it is important that people do so to identify bugs and test new features. 
However, if you don't know how to properly describe, diagnose and deal with a problem, don't tell 
yourself (or anyone else) that you are "helping the project" by running -current. "It didn't work!" is not a 
useful bug report
. "The recent changes to the pciide driver broke compatibility with my Slugchip-based 
IDE interface, dmesg of working and broken systems follow..." might be a useful report. 
There are times when "normal" users may wish to live on the cutting edge and run -current. The most 
common reason is that the user has a device which is not supported by -release (and thus, not -stable), or 
wishes to use a new feature of -current. In this case, the choice may be either -current or not using the 
device, and -current may be the lesser evil. However, one should not expect hand-holding from the 
developers.