Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD development into two parts. One branch was named -stable, with the intention that only well-tested bug fixes and small incremental enhancements would be made to it (for Internet Service Providers and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are quite undesirable). The other branch was -current, which essentially has been one unbroken line leading towards 4.0-RELEASE (and beyond) since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art would help, this is how it looks:
2.0
|
|
| [2.1-stable]
*BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-stable ends]
| (Mar 1997)
|
|
| [2.2-stable]
*BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 -> 2.2.8 [end]
| (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) (Dec 98)
|
|
3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997)
|
|
3.0.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998)
|
| [3.0-stable]
*BRANCH* 3.1 (Feb 1999) -> ... future 3.x releases ...
|
|
\|/
+
[4.0-current continues]
The -current branch is slowly progressing towards 4.0 and beyond, the previous 2.2-stable branch having just retired with the release of 2.2.8. 3.0-stable has now replaced it, the next release coming up with 3.1 in early 1999. 4.0-current is now the "current branch", with the first 4.0 releases appearing in Q1 2000.