2.0 support lifetime (was Re: [Bzr-packagers] bzr 2.0.5 source frozen; 2.1.1 coming soon)

[Martin Pool]

[back onto bzr]

On 24 March 2010 13:21, Gordon Tyler <gordon at doxxx.net> wrote:
> On 3/23/2010 3:13 AM, Martin Pool wrote:
>> The bzr 2.0.5 source tarball is now at https://edge.launchpad.net/bzr/2.0/2.0.5
>>
>> This will be a good update for people currently on 2.0.x.  Please package it!
>>
>> This shouldn't need any updates to plugins.
>>
>> I plan to freeze 2.1.1 tomorrow, and to announce both releases this Friday.
>
> Mac OS X 10.6 installer uploaded.

Thanks.

> How long are we going to maintain the 2.0 series? When does 2.1
> supersede it as the stable series?

When we released it, we said "at least 6 months", a window which has
now expired.  The short answer is that I think we should support 2.0
for 12 months from its release, in other words up to the 2.2 release.
We should agree on what that window will be then announce it.

I was going to enumerate the costs and benefits of continuing support
for longer but I think we all have a pretty good idea.

If we continue supporting 2.0 past the point we release 2.2, and we're
doing releases from 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 branches simultaneously, and
merging patches into all of them, it's perfectly feasible but it does
seem to get a bit complex.

Perhaps from the 2.2 point on we should do only absolutely critical
fixes back into 2.0, not general bugfixes.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>