I (and the YP TSC) are seeing various interesting things happening with the LTS. I think in general its good for the project, it is helping users and it is being positively received. We are starting to see various "pressures" on how it is being used as master and dunfell diverge naturally over time and I want to spell these issues out for people so that can try and avoid being drawn into traps.
Most of the issues are around the fact that our LTS now does not have the latest components in it. In particular, it doesn't have the latest toolchain (gcc 10 isn't there), the latest kernel (no 5.10) or the latest graphics stack (no new wayland features). >From an engineering perspective, most things are ultimately possible with a build system but that doesn't however mean they're a good idea. In isolation, it is possible to change+fix some of these things but usually only for some smaller subset of the ecosystem. Its unlikely that gcc 10 patches are going to be accepted in all dunfell layers for example (and quite rightly too). What that means is that you then fragment the ecosystem into your island where it works and the rest of it where it stands a good chance it will not. In some cases this may be fine but people do need to be extremely aware that once on your own island, you lose the benefit of co- travellers/compatibility and you have to do your own testing and validation. I think that people need to think long and hard about whether they are maintaining an existing release of something, or actively developing something which isn't yet in a stable lifecycle and therefore may not be a good fit for the LTS. In many cases older releases of a BSP, or a software stack can "fall" off onto the LTS, but the LTS isn't a way to allow current development of the latest and greatest without interruption of upstream changes. This means that LTS isn't a way to stop testing/developing against master. We probably do need to develop some documentation about what the LTS is/isn't and how best to use it, so any help with doing that would be much appreciated. Please do help us try and educate people that whilst the LTS is a good thing, it doesn't solve every problem and how to spot the signs where it may not be the right solution! Cheers, Richard
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