A commented-out Legacy Releases section was carried over in the conversion to Asciidoc, although we already describe Legacy Releases in the introduction to this section. Uncomment it and move 12.2 there.
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- R9:b67049ece14c: releases: Uncomment Legacy Releases and move 12.2 there
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The intent, as I understand it, is that the most recent major will be called the production release and the previous major(s) will be called legacy releases.
Maybe something like this, based on a suggestion from @jrtc27
FreeBSD releases are classified into the _Newest Release Series_ and _Older Release Series_. The newest release is best suited to users looking for the latest new features. Older releases are for users with a more conservative upgrade strategy wishing to stay on an existing release series.
I do not like this suggestion.
I thought we were done with the "production" versus "legacy" release categorization when the support model that was implemented in 11.0 went into place and 10.x reached EoL.
With that said, 12.3 is on the horizon, which will be "newer" than 13.0. How can we consider that to be a "legacy" release?
I object to this proposed change.
In fact, I would like to entirely remove the labels "production" and "legacy", wherever they exist within the documentation, and just refer to "releases". We either support it, or we don't.
@gjb what do you think about the suggestion above?
FreeBSD releases are classified into the _Newest Release Series_ and _Older Release Series_. The newest release is best suited to users looking for the latest new features. Older releases are for users with a more conservative upgrade strategy wishing to stay on an existing release series.
just refer to "releases"
That's fine for those of us who have been using FreeBSD for a long time, but it's confusing when we list both 13.0 and 12.2 as production releases; how is a new user to know which is better suited for their needs? We ought to give users some hint about how to choose one or the other. I think @jrtc27's suggestion captures that fairly well.
I do not like it. _Newest Release Series_ and _Older Release Series_ is ambiguous to me.
12.2-RELEASE came out last year; 13.0-RELEASE a few months ago, and 12.3-RELEASE a few months from now. So, when 12.3-RELEASE is out, does that make 13.0-RELEASE "legacy"?
The notion being proposed is a step backward, in my opinion, as it adds to user confusion potentially more than before the 11.x support model redux, where 8.2 would be supported longer than 8.3, for example.
Honestly, let's just get rid of "production" and "legacy" and be done with it.
If one cannot tell that 13 > 12, well, then some problems cannot be fixed.
12.2-RELEASE came out last year; 13.0-RELEASE a few months ago, and 12.3-RELEASE a few months from now. So, when 12.3-RELEASE is out, does that make 13.0-RELEASE "legacy"?
This is exactly why we need some clarity on this page - say it's December and 12.3 just came out, 13.0 is half a year old now. How should I choose one or the other? We tell users that there are production releases and legacy releases, and that they should choose the former for new features and the latter for a conservative upgrade path, but we don't actually have any legacy releases. So they should choose 13.0 or 12.3 for new features.