nova team mailing list archive

[Soren Hansen <soren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In today's release meeting, someone mentioned dot releases and we
decided to take it to the mailing list. This is me doing so.

In my dictionary, "dot releases" are "micro releases" that come out in
between "real releases".
We have Austin coming out in a couple of weeks, and Bexar is supposed to
follow 3 months after that. A "dot release" of Austin would be another
release based on Austin that adds some important bug fixes or similar
that we find as we move along (typically backported from later releases).

As an example of a project that does this, Ubuntu designates every
fourth release a "Long Term Support" release. These releases get a
number of dot releases in their lifetime (i.e. support timeframe).
"Regular" Ubuntu releases don't get dot releases.

I don't think we'll want to follow that particular pattern.

Instead, I propose we stick to our three months' (or whatever we'll end
up with) cadence. With such frequent releases, the burden of maintaining
older releases significantly past their release date doesn't seem worth
while for us as a project. However, if someone wants to maintain a
stable branch of e.g. Austin, we let them do so within the project. The
support and maintenance burden is primarily on them, but we provide the
framework for them to do so. We need to work out in detail how this will
work, of course, since their work will reflect upon the project as a whole.

As a notable exception, as Ubuntu is our primary distribution channel, I
expect we'll take it upon ourselves to maintain the versions of
OpenStack that end up getting included in Ubuntu's LTS's, but other than
that, I'd like it to be up to someone else.

Thoughts?

-- 
Soren Hansen
OpenStack core developer