I am afraid something like an "enthusiast-driven branch" is not a thing. Please read the last email of Jeff, first section.
On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 9:12 PM Alex Petrov <[email protected]> wrote: > > > 4.0 -> 4.1 -> 5.0 -> 5.1 -> trunk > > Could you elaborate: I was under impression the new branch is going to be > maintained by a group of enthusiasts. Are we now considering making this new > branch in the upgrade path? This sounds rather different from the original > idea of having an officially supported back port branch. > > On Mon, Oct 13, 2025, at 8:13 PM, Štefan Miklošovič wrote: > > What about this: do a proper 5.1 branch with everything (pipelines, release > ...) but put there only Java 21 support and CEP-37? > > Release-wise, the appetite is there (Josh, Bernardo). We would keep 5.0 > intact, 5.1 would be a branch we try this new model in, learn the lessons > from it. When we support Java 21 and CEP-37 as only two changes and nothing > else, it will already address Java 21 / unsupported Java 17 concerns and it > would bring a lot of relief to people trying to transition to 6.0 eventually > and they would have some time to prepare for that. Then, in 6.0, TCM / Accord > would be production ready waiting for them to migrate to, while they would > already be on Java 21 + repairs. > > So for a while we would have > > 4.0 -> 4.1 -> 5.0 -> 5.1 -> trunk > > Then 6.0 is out, by then, we will deprecate 4.x, right? So it would be > > 5.0 -> 5.1 -> 6.0 -> trunk > > Then we can do 6.1 branch and we will have some experience of what worked / > did not and we will be more ready to backport more or we will just abandon > this altogether. > > My idea is to just do something quick yet already beneficial. If we backport > only Java 21 and CEP-37 then upgrade paths will be pretty smooth, nothing new > will be there to cause any friction. > > As 5.0 / 5.1 will diverge relatively very little, all patches from 5.0 -> 5.1 > would be very easy, in majority of cases just clean merges up. > > The only overhead is CI but we have pre-ci too which we can leverage so ... > > I would be more open to this if we agreed that the scope of the backporting > on this initial pilot will be limited to a minimum of features and nothing > else. Then we can just reflect on what we did. > > On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 7:38 PM Jeff Jirsa <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On Oct 13, 2025, at 7:02 AM, Josh McKenzie <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > To respond to some of the other points and throw my perspective into the > > mix: > > > >> Release engineering for a branch is nearly a full-time job. > > While release management is a burden (and one we've had a hard time > > resourcing for years), I don't see it as being nearly a full-time job per > > branch. We also have contributors willing to step forward and take on this > > extra work and plenty of opportunity for automation on both release > > preparation and validation that would lower that burden further. > > > >> Unofficial branches will miss correctness and compatibility fixes unless > >> their maintenance is made a burden for all committers. > > Both proposals (backport to 5.0, support a 5.1 that accepts backport) would > > be considered official during the pilot. Bugfixes that are 5.0 or older > > would have 1 more branch they needed to apply to and merge through. > > > > I see the word unofficial used too many times. There’s no such thing as > unofficial. If it’s merged by committers and voted on for release by the PMC, > it’s official. If it’s not, it doesn’t belong in the ASF repos. > > > > >> – Backports branches don’t solve the “some people run forks” problem. > > I see this a bit differently; it doesn't "solve" the problem (I don't > > personally see this as a problem to be solved fwiw), but it does bring > > those forks much closer to upstream and move engineering effort that would > > otherwise be on private forks into the public space benefiting everyone. > > I think you’ve seen at least a few reasons in this thread why the goal and > proposal may not align. What one team considers ready and low risk, another > team begs not to be included. I suspect if there was really, truly a shared > understanding of “this is back port ready, low risk, ready to run”, we could > just put it into the existing branches (with a “yes this is a feature, but > it’s a feature we all trust” discussion)? > >
