From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Juergen Gross Subject: Re: RFC: change to 6 months release cycle Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 15:51:21 +0200 Message-ID: <56128059.5000906@suse.com> References: <20151002174356.GA3577@zion.uk.xensource.com> <5612755302000078000A8114@prv-mh.provo.novell.com> <20151005112357.GC29124@zion.uk.xensource.com> <1444045497.11707.195.camel@citrix.com> <5612642A.30407@suse.com> <1444046100.11707.196.camel@citrix.com> <20151005125545.GE29124@zion.uk.xensource.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mail6.bemta14.messagelabs.com ([193.109.254.103]) by lists.xen.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Zj6Am-0006qj-TU for xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org; Mon, 05 Oct 2015 13:51:25 +0000 In-Reply-To: <20151005125545.GE29124@zion.uk.xensource.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org To: Wei Liu , Ian Campbell Cc: Lars Kurth , Jan Beulich , xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org On 10/05/2015 02:55 PM, Wei Liu wrote: > On Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 12:55:00PM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote: >> On Mon, 2015-10-05 at 13:51 +0200, Juergen Gross wrote: >>> On 10/05/2015 01:44 PM, Ian Campbell wrote: >>>> On Mon, 2015-10-05 at 12:23 +0100, Wei Liu wrote: >>>>> we can pick a stable tree every X releases etc etc. >>>> >>>> I think switching to an LTS style model, i.e. only supporting 1/N for >>>> longer than it takes to release the next major version might be >>>> interesting >>>> to consider. I'm thinking e.g. of N=4 with a 6 month cycle. >>>> >>>> I think some of our downstreams (i.e. distros) would like this, since >>>> it >>>> gives them releases which are supported for a length of time more like >>>> their own release cycles. >>> >>> And again there will be a rush to get a feature in at the end of each >>> Nth cycle, as it will end up in the long-term stable version... >> >> I actually think there is plenty of stuff which people just want in _some_ >> release. >> > > I concur. Having a feature in some release, albeit not the stable one, > helps. For example, downstream developer will have a strong > justification for backporting stuff. How often did we have real feature backports in the past? Won't the increasing number of feature backport requests nullify the purpose of the short-time support of some releases: decrease the load of the stable maintainers? > As for "rush to get a feature at the end of each Nth cycle", it wouldn't > put us in a worse situation than we already have because N==1 nowadays. Sure. But reasoning "6 month release cycle is better because no feature needs to rush in" and "doing a stable release every 2 years with a possible rush at the end won't make it worse than today" seems to be a little bit strange to me. I don't fight against the 6 months release cycle. I just wanted to point out some IMO wrong justification for it. Juergen