HEADS UP: Change in build cadence

[Shawn Webb]

Hey all,

Building packages takes quite a while, especially for 14-STABLE. The
last package build for that branch took 371 hours, around 15-ish days.
We currently build installer images and base OS updates every 14 days.
This means that the 14-STABLE package builds will always be at least
one build behind.

So, we need to slow the cadence of our installer image and base OS
update builds. Instead of building installer images and base OS
updates bi-weekly, we will move to monthly builds.

This will allow us to, at the start of every month, perform a clean
package build. After that initial clean package build completes and is
synced, we can then perform incremental package builds for the
remainder of the month.

There are still a few potential issues with this. Sometimes, a port
gets updated that 20,000+ other ports depend on, effectively meaning
that we're doing a clean build even though an incremental build was
requested.

If an incremental package build is unable to complete by the time the
1st day of the next month comes around, we will cancel that build in
favor of starting the clean build on the 1st.

Slowing the frequency to monthly for the installers and base OS
updates also opens up new opportunities for the community to explore.
For example, we would welcome generation of .torrent files. Who knows,
maybe we could help perform the initial seeding. :-)

These changes will take place on 01 Feb 2024. Please let me know if
you have any questions, comments, or concerns.

Thanks,

--
Shawn Webb
Cofounder / Security Engineer
HardenedBSD

https://git.hardenedbsd.org/hardenedbsd/pubkeys/-/raw/master/Shawn_Webb/03A4CBEBB82EA5A67D9F3853FF2E67A277F8E1FA.pub.asc