cloud-init team mailing list archive

[Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On 08/31/2018 10:54 AM, Scott Moser wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 10:03 PM Robert Schweikert <rjschwei@xxxxxxxx
> <mailto:rjschwei@xxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     Hi,
> 
>     On 08/28/2018 09:48 PM, Scott Moser wrote:
>     > Thanks for raising this.
>     > This is the sort of feedback I was after.
>     > I'm not immediately opposed to supporting sles 12 in the way that we
>     > have centos 6 for python2.6.
>     >
>     > At what point do you think it would be reasonable to drop the 3.4
>     > support then?
> 
>     2022 or 2023, meaning there would be a frozen as in "no new features"
>     cloud-init version for 1 or 2 years in SLES 12.
> 
>     > Am I correct that you already have the next release of
>     > SLES (SLES 15) available.
> 
>     Yes SLES 15 was released about 6 weeks ago.
> 
>     > I'm guessing it has a 3.6 or greater.
> 
>     Yes, has Python 3.6.x
> 
>     >
>     > Perhaps we could say 3.4 support will be held for as long as
>     python 2?
> 
>     It would have to be longer. From my perspective there are no issues with
>     dropping Python 2 in 2020 if Python 3.4 is supported. Then I can switch
>     the cloud-init build to a Python 3 build for SLES 12 (Python 3.4 to be
>     exact) and let that carry me until we no longer want to support Python
>     3.4 upstream, preferably from my perspective in 2023. So, 3 years longer
>     than Python 2 support. But if we'd do 3.4 support until 2022 I can make
>     that work as well.
> 
> 
> While you probably have to provide bug fixes and security updates for
> cloud-init in SLES 12 for its lifetime, you certainly don't have to
> continue pulling back new releases.  At least my expectation was that at
> some point when someone wants/needs a new feature that is not in sles
> 12, but *is* in SLES 15 (that has python3.6) you say to them "Well, we
> have this nice shiny release that has that and all sorts of new
> features, can you try that?".  In 2020, SLES 15 will have been out for 2
> years.  Essentially at some point SLES 12 stops getting new features.

Yes, at some point SLES 12 stops getting new features in cloud-cloud
init, but the closer that point is to the end of general support the
better it is.

> 
> There is some maintenance for a distro that is to be expected.  Bug
> fixes in stable releases *always* have maintenance burden.  If upstream
> dropped python 3.4 support in 2020 you would have to support backporting
> fixes from master to your released version and possibly address any
> python 3.5+isms.  That's not any different than any other project/package.

That is correct.

> 
> How *would* you be supporting cloud-init in SLES 12?  Are you expecting
> to take new releases back? 

Yes, for as long as I possibly can. For example SLES 12 was first
released with 0.7.5 and we are now on 18.2. So as long as we support one
of the version of Python available on SLES 12 I will continue to update
to newer versions.

> Bring back new features? Or just fix
> critical/painful bugs?

I will try to avoid this stage for as long as possible.

Later,
Robert


-- 
Robert Schweikert                   MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU
Distinguished Architect                       LINUX
Team Lead Public Cloud
rjschwei@xxxxxxxx
IRC: robjo