Re: [Xen-devel] RFC: change to 6 months release cycle

[Wei Liu <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 03:51:21PM +0200, Juergen Gross wrote:
> 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?
> 

I think there is misunderstanding.

I don't say it's our duty (stable maintainers) to backport feature --
we certainly don't do that even if requested. But I can imagine some
downstream has an internal tree that only accepts backporting a feature
that's already in upstream. Anyway, I can't say for sure.

> >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.
> 

Sure. I just want to make sure everyone is on the same page.  But for
now let's focus on things we haven't had agreement instead of all these
tiny little details. :-)

Wei.

> 
> Juergen

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