Re: [Xen-devel] RFC: LTS and stable release scheme

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

>>> On 06.10.15 at 13:07, <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> A majority of developers express interests in trying a shorter release
> cycle -- to change from 9 months to 6 months [0]. There are, however,
> repercussions on how we manage stable and possible LTS releases.

I find it kind of odd to try to answer question 2 (cadence) without
first having answered 1 (whether to have stable releases at all). In
particular, the major downside of stable releases - them being
"better" than others - hasn't even been mentioned in you mail. And
afaict the reason for there being various LTS maintainers in Linux
is mainly because almost anyone can propose to LTS-maintain a
certain branch, and hence whenever an organization want a
certain release to be long term maintained all they have to ask
themselves is "Do we want to invest the resources for making it
so?" Along with this question goes - as seen internally here - the
question whether to instead align which kernel version to pick for
a product with which kernel version is expected to become an LTS
one.

I'm not sure if it's still that way nowadays, but in the years after
stable and long term releases got introduced in Linux even long
term branches weren't all equal: The general stable tree maintainer
actively argued against the use of certain branches (or certain
releases on a branch after it changed ownership), due to it being
of unknown (in the best case) quality.

Bottom line: I think the current model, with all releases being
equal and there being the opportunity to hand over branches to
"external" maintainers after the XenProject support ended
(exercised exactly once to date), is quite a bit better than any
of the LTS options I've seen proposed so far.

Jan


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