Why shouldn't I just go ahead and run -current?  That's got

        all the latest stuff, right?

      </heading>

      <p>4.0 is the next major release of FreeBSD. For now, and for a

      while, all -stable releases of FreeBSD will be in the 3.x

      line. These are minor releases, which do not introduce big

      changes and we try our best to avoid breaking compatibility

      backward compatibility (binary, file formats, etc).

      <p>Meanwhile, our fearless developers are cooking the 4.0

      version. This branch is known as 4.0-current, or just -current

      (since when 4.0 becomes stable, the current branch will become

      5.0-current).

      <p>Our developers are fearless because a -current system is

      something in development, and, thus, subject to all sort of

      bugs, which can wipe out your disks, burn your monitor, erase

      your BIOS, overheat your CPU(s), spit out your PCI cards, send

      the fans flying (sometimes throwing stuff at them first), make

      international phone calls to phone sex services, print

      pornography until your printer runs out of paper/toner (sorry,

      no such luck... it's just the Stark report), send insulting

      faxes to your boss, cheat on the mob and blame you for it,

      attract attention for the gentle I.R.S. personel, blow your

      house fuses, open the gas and then set your house on fire, make

      your girlfriend break up with you (or your wife cheat on you),

      and bomb Yugoslavia. This last one we are trying to debug,

      though [NOTE: at the time of this writing, we have reports that

      this bug has been fixed].

      <p>Because of the above, we advise against using -current. If

      you so insist, the following rules must be obeyed:

      <itemize>

       <item>Read cvs-all. No, I'm not kidding. I mean it.</item>

       <item>Read freebsd-current. Yeah, that one too.</item>

       <item>If something fails, it's probably because you missed a

       message on cvs-all or freebsd-current.</item>

       <item>If that's not the case, it's probably a temporary

       bug. Cvsup again after the appropriate time (minimum of one

       hour, though one full day is not unreasonable).</item>

       <item>If it still crashes *at the same location*, then it's

       probably your fault. Junk your customized settings, and try to

       reproduce it with a vanilla system.</item>

       <item>If you can reproduce it even with a vanilla system, then

       you might actually have stumbled on a bug. Congratulations!

       Find out what the bug is, and send us the patches.</item>

       <item>If you are not capable of the above, you might just keep

       quiet and wait until someone fixes it. See steps 1 and 2 for

       how do you know someone fixed it.</item>

       <item>On the other hand, you might help track down the

       bug. See the handbook on getting crash dumps, kernel traces,

       and such stuff.</item>

       <item>If you loose all data on your hard disks because of a

       bug, that's one of the risks of running -current. Either you

       can deal with that, or you shouldn't be running

       -current.</item>

      </itemize>

      <p>These rules, though written tongue-in-cheek, are for

      real. FreeBSD 4.0-current is <bf/not/ supposed to work all the

      time. It is being <bf/developed/, and saying "Hey! I have a

      bug!"  does <bf/not/ help developers. Furthermore, sometimes it

      breaks <bf/on purpose/, while things are being changed, and the

      fixes are <bf/not/ immediate.

      <p>If you can live with that, and think you have any compelling

      reason to run -current, read the handbook for further

      instructions.

      <p>Sorry if this seems too harsh, but many people are just not

      used to the concept of a development tree available publicly,

      and think of it as the "latest version". It is <bf/not/ the latest

      version. When it is <bf/ready/, it will be the latest

      version. Until then... read the above.

    <p><em>Contributed by 

    <url url="mailto:dcs@freebsd.org" name="Daniel C. Sobral">.</em>

    <sect1>

      <heading>