I think Claude introduced the idea of LTS releases, so I'm curious about whether he thinks that the audience for stability includes people who would use a "stable" series of the kind Osma describes, even without the Apache imprimatur.
ajs6f > On Jan 24, 2017, at 2:57 PM, Andy Seaborne <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> On 24/01/17 12:57, Osma Suominen wrote: >> 23.01.2017, 19:31, Andy Seaborne kirjoitti: >> >>> To expand on that: That would mean users could get source code to build >>> themselves, it would not be an "Apache release" and not in maven >>> central. For "products", the legal side of a release probably matters. >> >> Source code yes, but I think it would make sense to set up some kind of >> autobuilder for the stable branch, similar to how snapshots are built >> nightly. It shouldn't be much effort to set this up, but it would be a >> valuable service for users. > > It's not an Apache release. > > Snapshots are specifically allowed for developers which we include anyone > picking and testing. > > They are not releases. > > Products that want LTS stability will, I believe, want: > * The ASF release legal framework > * Assurance that the LTS will be around for the life of the product > * Ideally, support contracts (3rd party) > > It is likely because they don't have the technical capabilities or resources > in-house to investigate and report, let alone fix. > > The trouble really comes when a "bug fix" is a feature change. If the bug is > not some low thing like an NPE, one products view of a "fix" is another > products regression. > > (Believe me! It's happing to me right now - a SPARQL fix to comply with the > standard has causes interesting changes.) > > --------------------------- > > There are three options here: > > * Current > Advantage: bug fixes, most timely. > Disadvantage: picks up everything > > * A "last release+fixes" branch > Not a release ... unless voted on > Not long term stability (product life : years) > Some extra work > > * LTS > Long term commitment. > More work. > > And a point about LTS - more bug reports are nice, but contributions of fixes > is much better. > > I'm not convinced that item 2 would be much used - they last only 4 or 6 > months as I understand the concept. > > Events like Jena2->Jena3 are extremely rare. Otherwise, we add features, not > remove them, backwards compatibility is as good as a stable branch (I would > hope!). The low-cost way of careful adding to master seems to me best unless > we have additional contributions of fixes (not just reports) or other > resourcing. > > Andy
