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

[Wei Liu <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Oct 06, 2015 at 12:21:18AM +1100, Steven Haigh wrote:
> On 6/10/2015 12:05 AM, George Dunlap wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 5, 2015 at 12:44 PM, Steven Haigh <netwiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On 5/10/2015 10:23 PM, Wei Liu wrote:
> >>> On Mon, Oct 05, 2015 at 05:04:19AM -0600, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 02.10.15 at 19:43, <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>>>> The main objection from previous discussion seems to be that "shorter
> >>>>> release cycle creates burdens for downstream projects". I couldn't
> >>>>> quite get the idea, but I think we can figure out a way to sort that
> >>>>> out once we know what exactly the burdens are.
> >>>>
> >>>> I don't recall it that way. My main objection remains the resulting
> >>>> higher burden of maintaining stable trees. Right now, most of the
> >>>> time we have two trees to maintain. A 6-month release cycle means
> >>>> three of them (shortening the time we maintain those trees doesn't
> >>>> seem a viable option to me).
> >>>>
> >>>> Similar considerations apply to security maintenance of older trees.
> >> <snip>
> >>> Just to throw around some ideas: we can have more stable tree
> >>> maintainers, we can pick a stable tree every X releases etc etc.
> >>
> >> So everyone else in the industry is increasing their support periods for
> >> stable things, and we're wanting to go the opposite way?
> >>
> >> Sorry - but this is nuts. Have a stable branch that is actually
> >> supported properly with backports of security fixes etc - then have a
> >> 'bleeding edge' branch that rolls with the punches.
> >>
> >> Remember that folks are still running Xen 3.4 on EL5 - and will be at
> >> least until 2017. I still run the occasional patch for 4.2, and most
> >> people are on either 4.4 or testing with 4.5 when running with EL6.
> >>
> >> EL6 is supported until November 30, 2020. EL7 until 2024. People are not
> >> exactly thrilled with EL7 in the virt area - but will eventually move to
> >> it (or directly to EL8 or EL9).
> >>
> >> The 6 month release cycle is exactly why people don't run Fedora on
> >> their production environments. Why are we suddenly wanting the same
> >> release schedule for Xen?
> >>
> >> Sorry - but I'm VERY much against this proposal. Focus on stable and
> >> complete, not Ooohhhh Shiny!
> > 
> > I think you're talking about something completely different.
> > 
> > Wei is talking about releasing *more often*; you're talking about
> > having *longer support windows*.
> 
> I think we are both along the same lines - however we both have
> different points. The problem is, the more releases you have in a
> support window, the more you have to maintain.
> 
> I did like Ian's idea of a new stable / lts / whatever you want to call
> it every 4 x normal releases at 6 month timing. This would mean an LTS
> release would be supported for 2 years.
> 

FWIW current scheme (last 3 releases as stable releases) means a release
is supported for at least 27 months (well, let's forget about the
possibility of releasing a version earlier than expected for now because
it never happened before).

> I would really like to see:
> LTS = 4 year full support + 1 year security fixes only
> Rolling Release = 6 - 12 months between releases.
> 
> Is this possible? Not really sure - but the bigger end users don't want
> to have to retest everything every year. Honestly, even an LTS of
> *longer* than 4 years would be good - but I'm not sure that is even in
> the realm of consideration.
> 

Not sure if it is possible. I can't speak for stable tree maintainers.

For Linux, a LTS version is maintained from about 2.5 years to 5.5 years
(https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html).  In that sense, we're
not particularly bad, but we're not particularly good either.

In any case, I think this is still open to discussion.

> > Nobody is suggesting that we shouldn't have releases that are
> > supported for long periods of time.  What Wei is proposing is that
> > instead of releasing every 0.75 years and supporting every release for
> > N years, we release every 0.5 years, but every 1.0 (or 1.5) years make
> > a release that we support for N years.  Many projects do this,
> > including the Linux kernel.
> 
> True, but the kernel has several orders of magnitude more resources
> contributed. I still do my best to keep a security patched package of

I don't think it is fair to mix the effort of stable tree maintenance
and development.

In terms of stable tree maintenance, Linux only has one maintainer per
tree. We're not worse than that.

I think what we can learn from Linux is that they seem to have a culture
that different vendors step up as stable tree maintainers. We're not
quite there yet.

Anyway, I think at some point we shall start a thread for stable
releases. I will make sure you are CC'ed.

Wei.

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