Re: [PATCH] RFC: Version support policy

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@xxxxxxxx>]

On 19.08.2021 13:55, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Jan Beulich writes ("Re: [PATCH] RFC: Version support policy"):
>> On 13.08.2021 13:37, Ian Jackson wrote:
>>> In this patch I propose a cutoff of 6 years.
>>> Obviously there will be debate about the precise value.
>>
>> Indeed I consider this way too short. Purely as a personal (and
>> abstract) view (realizing this isn't really practical, and knowing
>> there are reasons why I'd actually like to see a bump of the
>> baseline) I'd prefer if there weren't minimum version requirements
>> at all (apart from maybe - along the lines of ...
>>
>>> It will also be necessary to make exceptions, and/or to make different
>>> rules for different architectures.  In particular, new architectures,
>>> new configurations, or new features, may need an absolute earliest
>>> tooling date which is considerably less than the usual limit.
>>
>> ... this - a baseline determined when Xen became an open source
>> project).
> 
> I don't think that is workable.  Effectively, it means we are
> targeting a constantly-obsolescing dependency environment.  It
> would prevent us from adopting even very-well-established facilities
> and improvements in our dependencies.
> 
> Effectively, it would force us to continue to write using 10- or
> 20-year-old idioms.  Idioms many of which have been found to be
> suboptimal, and which in some cases are becoming unsupported.

Right - that's why I did write "knowing there are reasons why I'd
actually like to see a bump of the baseline". I'm really of two
minds here, and either route has perhaps severe drawbacks.

Jan