On 9/1/20 2:00 PM, Simon Horman wrote: > On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 02:24:11PM +0200, Ilya Maximets wrote: >> While only 2 branches are formally maintained (LTS and latest release), >> OVS team usually provides stable releases for other branches too, at >> least for branches between LTS and latest. >> >> While LTS change happens, according to release-process.rst, we're >> immediately dropping support for the old LTS and, according to >> backporting-patches.rst could stop backporting bug fixes to branches >> older than new LTS. While this might be OK for an upstream project >> (some upstream projects like QEMU doesn't support anything at all >> except the last release) it doesn't sound like a user-friendly policy. >> >> Below addition to the release process might make the process a bit >> smoother in terms that we will continue support of branches a little >> bit longer even after changing current LTS, i.e. providing at least a >> minimal transition period (1 release frame) for users of old LTS. >> We will also not drop support for not so old branches even after the >> transition period if committers will follow the "as far as it goes" >> backporting policy. >> >> Still keeping the room for us to not backport disruptive changes or >> changes that are hard to maintain or OVN related fixes anywhere but >> LTS and the latest released branch. >> >> After 2 year period (4 releases) committers are still free to backport >> fixes they think are needed on older branches, however we will likely >> not provide actual releases on these branches, unless it's specially >> requested and discussed. >> >> Effectively, this change means that we will support branch-2.5 until >> 2.15 release, i.e. we will provide the last release, if any, on >> branch-2.5 somewhere around Feb 2021. (I don't actually expect >> much fixes there) And, presumably, at the same time we will provide >> last releases for branch 2.11 and below, if needed. >> >> Additionally, "4 releases" policy aligns with the DPDK LTS support >> policy, i.e. we will be able to validate and release last OVS releases >> with the last available DPDK LTS, e.g. OVS 2.11 last stable release >> will likely be released with the 18.11 EOL release validated. >> >> Signed-off-by: Ilya Maximets <i.maxim...@ovn.org> > > This also sounds reasonable to me but I don't feel that I am in a position > to sign off on it. > > Reviewed-by: Simon Horman <simon.hor...@netronome.com> > > Do you, as a follow-up, plan to open a discussion on formalising the > LTS selection process?
It's probably better do that with this patch. Please, take a look at my reply to Flavio. Best regards, Ilya Maximets. _______________________________________________ dev mailing list d...@openvswitch.org https://mail.openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/ovs-dev