Hi all,
During the recent discussion about releasing Subversion 1.15, several issues
with our current LTS/regular release policy [1] were highlighted [2].
Building on Brane's suggestion, Nathan and I have drafted a definition for an
updated release policy to resolve the issues. Namely, it should:
- Encourage packagers to pick up new releases, instead of postponing adoption
until the next LTS release.
- Address the problem that we might not have enough resources for a steady
rate of non-empty regular releases every 6 months.
- Allow us to not have to decide whether 1.15 should be a regular or an LTS
release, given that both of them have downsides after a long break in our
release cycle.
- Return us to a proven model that worked well in the past.
The policy is defined as follows:
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Starting with 1.15, all release lines are supported for at least 3 years.
At least one release line is always supported.
A release line becomes EOL when the following conditions are met
simultaneously:
- It has been supported for at least 3 years.
- There is a new minor release line with an age of at least 3 months.
Among the supported release lines:
- The latest release line ("N") receives full support.
- Other release lines (N-1, N-2, …) receive security-only support and
critical bugfixes, e.g., related to data corruption.
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While I believe there's rough consensus about it, I want to make sure this
change receives appropriate attention.
Personally, I am +1 to moving forward with this policy for 1.15 and later
releases.
[1]: https://subversion.apache.org/roadmap.html#release-planning
[2]: https://lists.apache.org/thread/bh3dyv100qlkwgb76lwdw91yrk24ndxg
Thanks,
Evgeny Kotkov
