Removing it makes sense. We did not have a good way of measuring the demand for LTS releases.
There was a suggestion to mark the last release with python 2 support to be an LTS release, was there a conclusion on that? ( +Valentyn Tymofieiev <valen...@google.com> ) Ahmet On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 2:34 PM Robert Bradshaw <rober...@google.com> wrote: > There seems to have been lack of demand. I agree we should remove > these statements from our site until we find a reason to re-visit > doing LTS release. > > On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 2:23 PM Austin Bennett > <whatwouldausti...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > What's our LTS policy these days? It seems we should remove the > following from our site (and encourage GCP does the same, below), if we're > not going to maintain these. I'll update policy page via PR, if get the go > ahead that it is our desire. Seems we can't suggest policies in a policy > doc that we don't follow...? > > > > I am not trying to suggest demand for LTS. If others haven't spoken up, > that also indicates lack of demand. Point of my message is to say, we > should update our Policies doc, if those aren't what we are practicing (and > can re-add later if wanting to revive LTS). > > > > https://beam.apache.org/community/policies/ > > > > Apache Beam aims to make 8 releases in a 12 month period. To accommodate > users with longer upgrade cycles, some of these releases will be tagged as > long term support (LTS) releases. LTS releases receive patches to fix major > issues for 12 months, starting from the release’s initial release date. > There will be at least one new LTS release in a 12 month period, and LTS > releases are considered deprecated after 12 months. The community will mark > a release as a LTS release based on various factors, such as the number of > LTS releases currently in flight and whether the accumulated feature set > since the last LTS provides significant upgrade value. Non-LTS releases do > not receive patches and are considered deprecated immediately after the > next following minor release. We encourage you to update early and often; > do not wait until the deprecation date of the version you are using. > > > > > > > > > > Seems a Google Specific Concern, but related to the community: > https://cloud.google.com/dataflow/docs/support/sdk-version-support-status#apache-beam-sdks-2x > > > > Apache Beam is an open source, community-led project. Google is part of > the community, but we do not own the project or control the release > process. We might open bugs or submit patches to the Apache Beam codebase > on behalf of Dataflow customers, but we cannot create hotfixes or official > releases of Apache Beam on demand. > > > > However, the Apache Beam community designates specific releases as long > term support (LTS) releases. LTS releases receive patches to fix major > issues for a designated period of time. See the Apache Beam policies page > for more details about release policies. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 5:01 PM Ahmet Altay <al...@google.com> wrote: > >> > >> I agree with retiring 2.7 as the LTS family. Based on my experience > with users 2.7 does not have a particularly high adoption and as pointed > out has known critical issues. Declaring another LTS pending demand sounds > reasonable but how are we going to gauge this demand? > >> > >> +Yifan Zou +Alan Myrvold on the tooling question as well. Unless we > address the tooling problem it seems difficult to feasibly maintain LTS > versions over time. > >> > >> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 3:45 PM Austin Bennett < > whatwouldausti...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>> > >>> To be clear, I was picking on - or reminding us of - the promise: I > don't have a strong personal need/desire (at least currently) for LTS to > exist. Though, worth ensuring we live up to what we keep on the website. > And, without an active LTS, probably something we should take off the site? > >>> > >>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 1:33 PM Pablo Estrada <pabl...@google.com> > wrote: > >>>> > >>>> +Łukasz Gajowy had at some point thought of setting up jenkins jobs > without coupling them to the state of the repo during the last Seed Job. It > may be that that improvement can help test older LTS-type releases? > >>>> > >>>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 1:11 PM Robert Bradshaw <rober...@google.com> > wrote: > >>>>> > >>>>> In many ways the 2.7 LTS was trying to flesh out the process. I think > >>>>> we learned some valuable lessons. It would have been good to push out > >>>>> something (even if it didn't have everything we wanted) but that is > >>>>> unlikely to be worth pursuing now (and 2.7 should probably be retired > >>>>> as LTS and no longer recommended). > >>>>> > >>>>> I agree that it does not seem there is strong demand for an LTS at > >>>>> this point. I would propose that we keep 2.16, etc. as potential > >>>>> candidates, but only declare one as LTS pending demand. The question > >>>>> of how to keep our tooling stable (or backwards/forwards compatible) > >>>>> is a good one, especially as we move to drop Python 2.7 in 2020 > (which > >>>>> could itself be a driver for an LTS). > >>>>> > >>>>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 12:27 PM Kenneth Knowles <k...@apache.org> > wrote: > >>>>> > > >>>>> > Yes, I pretty much dropped 2.7.1 release process due to lack of > interest. > >>>>> > > >>>>> > There are known problems so that I cannot recommend anyone to use > 2.7.0, yet 2.7 it is the current LTS family. So my work on 2.7.1 was > philosophical. I did not like the fact that we had a designated LTS family > with no usable releases. > >>>>> > > >>>>> > But many backports were proposed to block 2.7.1 and took a very > long time to get contirbutors to implement the backports. I ended up doing > many of them just to move it along. This indicates a lack of interest to > me. The problem is that we cannot really use a strict cut off date as a way > to ensure people do the important things and skip the unimportant things, > because we do know that the issues are critical. > >>>>> > > >>>>> > And, yes, the fact that Jenkins jobs are separately evolving but > pretty tightly coupled to the repo contents is a serious problem that I > wish we had fixed. So verification of each PR was manual. > >>>>> > > >>>>> > Altogether, I still think LTS is valuable to have as a promise to > users that we will backport critical fixes. I would like to keep that > promise and continue to try. Things that are rapidly changing (which > something always will be) just won't have fixes backported, and that seems > OK. > >>>>> > > >>>>> > Kenn > >>>>> > > >>>>> > On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 10:59 AM Maximilian Michels < > m...@apache.org> wrote: > >>>>> >> > >>>>> >> An LTS only makes sense if we end up patching the LTS, which so > far we > >>>>> >> have never done. There has been work done in backporting fixes, > see > >>>>> >> https://github.com/apache/beam/commits/release-2.7.1 but the > effort was > >>>>> >> never completed. The main reason I believe were complications with > >>>>> >> running the evolved release scripts against old Beam versions. > >>>>> >> > >>>>> >> Now that the portability layer keeps maturing, it makes me > optimistic > >>>>> >> that we might have a maintained LTS in the future. > >>>>> >> > >>>>> >> -Max > >>>>> >> > >>>>> >> On 19.09.19 08:40, Ismaël Mejía wrote: > >>>>> >> > The fact that end users never asked AFAIK in the ML for an LTS > and for > >>>>> >> > a subsequent minor release of the existing LTS shows IMO the low > >>>>> >> > interest on having a LTS. > >>>>> >> > > >>>>> >> > We still are heavily iterating in many areas > (portability/schema) and > >>>>> >> > I am not sure users (and in particular users of open source > runners) > >>>>> >> > get a big benefit of relying on an old version. Maybe this is > the > >>>>> >> > moment to reconsider if having a LTS does even make sense given > (1) > >>>>> >> > that our end user facing APIs are 'mostly' stable (even if many > still > >>>>> >> > called @Experimental). (2) that users get mostly improvements on > >>>>> >> > runners translation and newer APIs with a low cost just by > updating > >>>>> >> > the version number, and (3) that in case of any regression in an > >>>>> >> > intermediary release we still can do a minor release even if we > have > >>>>> >> > not yet done so, let's not forget that the only thing we need > to do > >>>>> >> > this is enough interest to do the release from the maintainers. > >>>>> >> > > >>>>> >> > > >>>>> >> > On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 12:00 AM Valentyn Tymofieiev > >>>>> >> > <valen...@google.com> wrote: > >>>>> >> >> > >>>>> >> >> I support nominating 2.16.0 as LTS release since in has robust > Python 3 support compared with prior releases, and also for reasons of > pending Python 2 deprecation. This has been discussed before [1]. As Robert > pointed out in that thread, LTS nomination in Beam is currently > retroactive. If we keep the retroactive policy, the question is how long we > should wait for a release to be considered "safe" for nomination. Looks > like in case of 2.7.0 we waited a month, see [2,3]. > >>>>> >> >> > >>>>> >> >> Thanks, > >>>>> >> >> Valentyn > >>>>> >> >> > >>>>> >> >> [1] > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/eba6caa58ea79a7ecbc8560d1c680a366b44c531d96ce5c699d41535@%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E > >>>>> >> >> [2] https://beam.apache.org/blog/2018/10/03/beam-2.7.0.html > >>>>> >> >> [3] > https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/896cbc9fef2e60f19b466d6b1e12ce1aeda49ce5065a0b1156233f01@%3Cdev.beam.apache.org%3E > >>>>> >> >> > >>>>> >> >> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 2:46 PM Austin Bennett < > whatwouldausti...@gmail.com> wrote: > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> Hi All, > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> According to our policies page [1]: "There will be at least > one new LTS release in a 12 month period, and LTS releases are considered > deprecated after 12 months" > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> The last LTS was released 2018-10-02 [2]. > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> Does that mean the next release (2.16) should be the next > LTS? It looks like we are in danger of not living up to that promise. > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> Cheers, > >>>>> >> >>> Austin > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> [1] https://beam.apache.org/community/policies/ > >>>>> >> >>> > >>>>> >> >>> [2] https://beam.apache.org/get-started/downloads/ >
