# What does freebsd 13 mean??



## BsDjUsTbSd (May 16, 2020)

The current latest vesrion(not beta) of FreeBSD is 12.1 
What do people mean when they say 13???
Do they mean 11.3


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## Hakaba (May 16, 2020)

13 : Purely experimental snapshot of next FreeBSD version.


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## BsDjUsTbSd (May 16, 2020)

Thank for the reply


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## drhowarddrfine (May 16, 2020)

"Experimental" is the wrong word. It's the "development" branch at the moment.


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## obsigna (May 16, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> "Experimental" is the wrong word. It's the "development" branch at the moment.


Are you sure?

I am looking at the typical development cycle:

Coding
Testing (by experiments)
Debugging
goto 1.
I am not a native English speaker, however, for me the stage 2 (i.e. experimental) describes quite well the 13-CURRENT snapshot.


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## Hakaba (May 16, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> "Experimental" is the wrong word. It's the "development" branch at the moment.


I only use the same sementic as FreeBSD.org (see my link above).


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## drhowarddrfine (May 16, 2020)

Hakaba It includes experimental changes but the whole thing, as the paragraph states, is the current work in progress which will one day become the RELEASE version. Including experimental elements in this does not make the whole project an experiment.


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## ucomp (May 16, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> "Experimental" is the wrong word. It's the "development" branch at the moment.
> 
> 
> drhowarddrfine said:
> ...


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## 20-100-2fe (May 16, 2020)

In this page, the "experimental" adjective referred to the daily snapshots, i.e. an installable image.
The 13-CURRENT branch is the "development" branch of the sources.

So you are both right depending on what you're talking about. 



Hakaba said:


> I only use the same sementic as FreeBSD.org (see my link above).


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## drhowarddrfine (May 16, 2020)

20-100-2fe said:


> So you are both right


Have you ever known me to be wrong?


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## ucomp (May 17, 2020)

(  an example (of a lot of)  ) :
while, as correctly enlightened by Dr. Howard Fine,  (13) current ist the standard dev branch that doen`t necessarily mean that developers only work under 13. It's possible that e.g. a port does work under 13 but doesn`t under 12.1 .
Developers then decide if they write a patch for 12.1 or e.g.  wait until 12.1 is EOL.

the best way to understand all that stuff :
Get your copy of a 13-snap and start helping the FreeBSD-project by testing and/or development, write bug reports, subscribe to mailing lists.
You will learn a lot and take benefit of that in your daily work, even if you just want to use FreeBSD as it is.


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## a6h (May 17, 2020)

For the sake of intolerable nit-picking, and giving moderator a reason, to abort this thread:
The use of the term "experimental" instead of "development", is not wrong semantically, but it is incorrect syntactically.


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## BsDjUsTbSd (May 17, 2020)

This turned into a big post


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## getopt (May 17, 2020)

BsDjUsTbSd said:


> This turned into a big post


It has the potential to become a bloated moment of glory.

And there it started:


drhowarddrfine said:


> "Experimental" is the wrong word.





ucomp said:


> correctly enlightened by Dr. Howard Fine



Now where is light, shadow can be found. Be careful where you get your enlightenment from. Is it from Dr. Howard or is it from Dr. Fine? The nick may be a code for some alternate personality. So if you like to award an academic degree to our honorable drhowarddrfine do not go over the alter ego Mr. Fine.

Enlightenment rarely proves something right or wrong.

If drhowarddrfine thinks the text on the webpage is "wrong", he should file a PR for the sake of being 'right' and preventing threads like this:

Report an issue with the FreeBSD documentation or website



drhowarddrfine said:


> Have you ever known me to be wrong?



I know your desires.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 17, 2020)

getopt said:


> If @drhowarddrfine thinks the text on the webpage is "wrong", he should file a PR


I do not think the page is wrong. I'm saying the usage does not say version 13 is experimental. It says it includes experimental code but that doesn't make the whole version experimental.

I was hesitant to say anything at all with concerns this thread would spin off like it has about that. Which shows that I was right again!


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## ucomp (May 17, 2020)

getopt said:


> .....
> 
> Report an issue with the FreeBSD documentation or website ...



'the docs repo' is 1 (of 3) source trees which will be reviewed in development circle.
Therefore, there is less space in the docs for experimental claims than here, while it's sometimes a real experiment of not losing the patience because of waiting for review


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## getopt (May 17, 2020)

We have got a link:


Hakaba said:


> 13 : Purely experimental snapshot of next FreeBSD version.



And I doubt everyone went there and found the cite. So for the lazy here is the text:
---%---
*Development Snapshots*

If you are interested in a purely experimental *snapshot* release of FreeBSD-CURRENT (AKA 13.0-CURRENT), aimed at developers and bleeding-edge      testers only, then please see the FreeBSD Snapshot Releases page.
---%---

If you like it or not "purely experimental" can be seen there and it can be read there. But interpretation is still left to the reader.



drhowarddrfine said:


> It says it includes experimental code but that doesn't make the whole version experimental.



An OS is used as a whole. You cannot use a version in part. Therefore CURRENT is never a supported platform.


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## ucomp (May 17, 2020)

getopt said:


> An OS is used as a whole. You cannot use a version in part.


sorry, but technically : *YES  YOU CAN* use a version(or features of that version) in part.....while it's a detail, an example :
there are e.g. different kernel-configurations  like GENERIC, GENERIC-NODEBUG, GENERIC-MMCCAM.... which include or exclude parts of the OS-functionality.
and there are src.conf and make.conf where you e.g.  include/exclude clang from bootstrap-compiling... and so on ...

and typically people who do things like that use .......
hmmm, what version do they use ?..
guessed correctly :
mostly FreeBSD 13-current


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## getopt (May 17, 2020)

ucomp of course that's true. But I guess that never was a point in this discussion. Now we end up in hair-splitting.
If you've got a CURRENT kernel and a RELEASE-12 userland how do you tag such a system? I'd call it still experimental as a whole.


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## drhowarddrfine (May 17, 2020)

Only among us geeks would this be a Silicon Valley episode. (And you know which episode I'm talking about.)


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## getopt (May 17, 2020)

I think the best suited genre would be a sitcom ...
as long as we can keep it entertaining.

The comedy starts right after


BsDjUsTbSd said:


> Thank for the reply



Probably because OP didn't tag the thread as SOLVED.
Did he encourage anyone to add more confusion?


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## ucomp (May 17, 2020)

getopt said:


> ucomp
> ...If you've got a CURRENT kernel and a RELEASE-12 userland *how do you tag such a system?* ...


 e.g.  *r361019*


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## goshanecr (May 19, 2020)

Guys! For that topic I have much more suitable soap opera than *Silicon Valley , *it is *Zhuki *!


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