Yes, we had a suggestion to pick a stable Python 2 release as an LTS. The suggestion assumed that LTS will continue to exist. Now, if Python 2 is the only reason to have an LTS, we can consider it as long as: - we scope the LTS portion to Python SDK only. - we have an ownership story for Python 2 LTS, for example volunteers in dev or user community who will be willing to maintain that release.
We can bring this up when we drop Python 2 support. We decided to revisit that conversation in a couple of months IIRC. On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 3:44 PM Ahmet Altay <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > <[email protected]> ) > > Ahmet > > On Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 2:34 PM Robert Bradshaw <[email protected]> > 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 >> <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> 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 < >> [email protected]> 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 <[email protected]> >> 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 <[email protected]> >> 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 <[email protected]> >> 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 < >> [email protected]> 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 >> >>>>> >> > <[email protected]> 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 < >> [email protected]> 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/ >> >
