[ovs-discuss] time for another LTS?

[Flavio Leitner]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 08:23:37AM -0700, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 11:48:07AM +0000, Stokes, Ian wrote:
> > > On 10/18/2018 10:46 PM, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> > > > I've had a number of queries from folks lately about our roadmap for
> > > > LTS releases.  It has, indeed, been a long time since we've had a
> > > > long-term support release (the current LTS is 2.5).  Usually, we've
> > > > done LTS releases before some kind of big architectural change, etc.,
> > > > and so we've had no real internal pressure within the project to do it
> > > > for a while.  But it might be a good signal to the community to bring
> > > > the LTS release forward.
> > > >
> > > > What does everyone think about making the next (2.11) release an LTS?
> > > >
> > > 
> > > I think it's a good idea. The current LTS is quite old now, especially for
> > > the DPDK datapath. There is a new DPDK LTS coming out in November which
> > > should be in for OVS 2.11, so it would be a nice combination for a user to
> > > have LTS support for both.
> > 
> > +1
> > 
> > With regards backporting support for LTS releases, I take it LTS takes priority over non LTS branches, that would be the only difference I would think?
> 
> Yes, basically we should try harder to backport to LTS branches.
> 
> > In fairness I think the community is pretty good as is for backporting
> > bug fixes for all branches.
> 
> We do a pretty good job of it most of the time.  The main driver for LTS
> releases has been big OVS internal changes that are likely to break
> things.  By doing an LTS release just before a version with those kinds
> of changes, we gave our users something to confidently fall back on if
> the next release was a little more unstable--not that we ever aim for
> that, but it happens sometimes.  We haven't had that kind of big change
> recently, so we haven't had a natural impetus to release an LTS--and for
> the same reason, it's been easy to backport most fixes because there
> haven't been sweeping changes across the tree.

What comes to mind is if OVN manages to split up from OVS soon.
Wouldn't be easier if OVN, as a separated project, requires
an OVS LTS version? If so, then 2.11 might not be the best one.

-- 
Flavio