Top posting here as my remarks are mainly on the original topic. I’m not in favor of supporting LTS releases as a community. The reasoning here is that there is a huge chance that we will fragment the community in people that just want to work on the latest and greatest and some other folks who are trying to keep older releases from being updated with newer fixes. It requires a lot of dedicated commitment to keep an LTS release going. Particularly if you yourself are already working with a newer release in your environment. So from a personal standpoint i can almost guarantee that i will probably not spend the time and effort of back porting any fixes i do to older versions of CloudStack.
That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. If people are willing to take charge of an LTS branch and are willing to do the work to back port fixes where appropriate i would happily support them and even try to test the releases so we can have an official release. New developers might also be scared by the fact that a fix they make has to be supported on multiple branches and might decide not to commit such a fix because of the work involved. With the rate of change in the code at the moment this is also very hard for seasoned developers, so much little, but important stuff changes all the time that back porting is very difficult. It is an open source project and generally people will want to focus on the latest and greatest and just get their features in. I’m already regularly having some trouble back porting between master and 4.5. Consider back porting to master, 4.5 and 4.3 as well and having to test each branch. Basically my point is, everyone who wants to LTS support a certain branch is free to do so. Whether or not other contributors or committers will want to do that is their choice. As a community we should not make any promises about LTS support for a certain branch. Cheers, Hugo > On 25 nov. 2014, at 16:16, Rohit Yadav <rohit.ya...@shapeblue.com> wrote: > > Hey Daan, > >> On 25-Nov-2014, at 7:26 pm, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> That is worrying, Rohit. As the rest of your mail is already a vote of >> distrust, this part says we should not release 4.4.2 as it contains >> regressions. > > Looks like you skimmed my email and missed the following from my previous > email: > “Note: This is not to say that 4.4.x is not stable, we’re simply saying we > recommend 4.3.x because we have a confidence of its stability and we > encourage serious CloudStack users to use it.” > > 4.4.x is probably the greatest ACS feature release ever but I would still > recommend conservative users (who consult me) to stick to 4.3.x for > production since we know it just works with least amount of pain. The other > issue is I know a lot of people who are on ACS 4.3.x still (including > ShapeBlue’s customers) want to have bugfix releases and they may not want to > migrate to 4.4.x right now since 4.5.x is about 2–3 months away. > > ACS when consumed by enterprise companies has a typical lifecycle that lasts > at least 6 months, that means someone needs to support it, therefore the idea > of official LTS releases. > >> This is a very bad signal to users and the rest of the >> community. What you are saying is (you in transitive form), 'we won't >> port fixes to 4.4 but only to 4.3 so upgrade to newer 4.3 versions and >> not to a 4.4 version. You have the right to do so but I don't like it. > > In any form I did not say anything about not helping out or not porting > things. People who know me, know that I love to help everyone and I’m quite > prompt at reply and resolving things. I’ve taken the task to maintain 4.3 and > you’re very welcome to go thorough JIRA etc. to backport things that you want > for 4.4 since you’re alone the gatekeeper of this branch. > > I’m going through these bugs that have a different fix version (not 4.3.0 or > 4.3.1): https://issues.apache.org/jira/issues/?filter=12329775 > > Wido suggested that backporting is time consuming so as a challenge I’ve went > through 50 issues today, I was able to understand/backport about 25 of them > that qualified for 4.3 branch (many of them were trivial, > https://git-wip-us.apache.org/repos/asf?p=cloudstack.git;a=commit;h=f72eb945540e607ff25917922b4084187246f31a), > about 10 of them were hard to backport so I’ve asked authors to help out. I > think with this speed I alone should be able to go through like 300 issues > reported on JIRA in about 10-15 days time and after than about 10-20 days of > testing and getting the bugfix release out. Though if we all help out we can > get more mileage. > > It sucks for me personally that I’ve been emailing you privately about > cherry-pick and asking you to pick them on 4.4 (also leaving messages on > JIRA). I’ll continue to do that :) and meanwhile, you are very welcome to go > see the things I picked on 4.3 and pick those applicable on 4.4. > > Yours friendly and as always, > > Rohit Yadav > Software Architect, ShapeBlue > M. +91 88 262 30892 | rohit.ya...@shapeblue.com > Blog: bhaisaab.org | Twitter: @_bhaisaab > > Find out more about ShapeBlue and our range of CloudStack related services > > IaaS Cloud Design & Build<http://shapeblue.com/iaas-cloud-design-and-build//> > CSForge – rapid IaaS deployment framework<http://shapeblue.com/csforge/> > CloudStack Consulting<http://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-consultancy/> > CloudStack Software > Engineering<http://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-software-engineering/> > CloudStack Infrastructure > Support<http://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-infrastructure-support/> > CloudStack Bootcamp Training > Courses<http://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-training/> > > This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended > solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or > opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily > represent those of Shape Blue Ltd or related companies. If you are not the > intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon > its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you > believe you have received this email in error. Shape Blue Ltd is a company > incorporated in England & Wales. ShapeBlue Services India LLP is a company > incorporated in India and is operated under license from Shape Blue Ltd. > Shape Blue Brasil Consultoria Ltda is a company incorporated in Brasil and is > operated under license from Shape Blue Ltd. ShapeBlue SA Pty Ltd is a company > registered by The Republic of South Africa and is traded under license from > Shape Blue Ltd. ShapeBlue is a registered trademark.
