0.98 has had a great run! I think it's entirely reasonable to start winding it down. Maybe some blog post walking through the upgrade process -- demonstrating how easy it is and where the gotchas may lie would help encourage our brave and true 23%.
Thank you for your dedicated and diligent 2.5 years and 21 releases! You are an impressive volunteer. On Friday, August 26, 2016, Andrew Purtell <apurt...@apache.org> wrote: > Greetings, > > HBase 0.98.0 was released in February of 2014. We have had 21 releases in 2 > 1/2 years at a fairly regular cadence, a terrific run for any software > product. However as 0.98 RM I think it's now time to discuss winding down > 0.98. I want to give you notice of this as far in advance as possible (and > have just come to a decision barely this week). We have several more recent > releases at this point that are quite stable, a superset of 0.98 > functionality, and have been proven in deployments. It's wise not to take > on unnecessary risk by upgrading from a particular version, but in the case > of 0.98, it's getting to be that time. > > If you have not yet, I would encourage you to take a few moments to > participate in our fully anonymous usage survey: > https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NJFKKGW . According to results received so > far, the versions of HBase in production use break down as: > > - 0.94 - 19% > - 0.96 - 2% > - *0.98 - 23%* > - 1.0 - 20% > - 1.1 - 34% > - 1.2 - 23% > > These figures add up to more than 100% because some respondents I expect > run more than one version. > > For those 23% still on 0.98 (and the 2% on 0.96) it's time to start > seriously thinking about an upgrade to 1.1 or later. The upgrade process > can be done in a rolling manner. We consider 1.1 (and 1.2 for that matter) > to be stable and ready for production. > > As 0.98 RM, my plan is to continue active maintenance at a roughly monthly > release cadence through December of this year. However in January 2017 I > plan to tender my resignation as 0.98 RM and, hopefully, take that active > role forward to more recent code not so full of dust and cobwebs and more > interesting to develop and maintain. Unless someone else steps up to take > on that task this will end regular 0.98 releases. I do not expect anyone to > take on that role, frankly. Of course we can still make occasional 0.98 > releases on demand. Any committer can wrangle the bits and the PMC can > entertain a vote. (If you can conscript a committer to assist with > releasing I don't think you even need to be a committer to function as RM > for a release.) Anyway, concurrent with my resignation as 0.98 RM I expect > the project to discuss and decide an official position on 0.98 support. It > is quite possible we will announce that position to be an end of life. > > > -- > Best regards, > > - Andy > > Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. - Piet Hein > (via Tom White) >
