Inquiry: NGINX branch to track in "Interim" Non-LTS Releases

Thomas Ward teward at ubuntu.com
Wed Aug 8 14:00:59 UTC 2018



On 08/08/2018 01:22 AM, Christian Ehrhardt wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 7:14 PM Thomas Ward <teward at ubuntu.com
> <mailto:teward at ubuntu.com>> wrote:
>
>     <snip>
>
> Hi Thomas,
> yeah I'd prefer to track Mainline in non-LTS releases as well.
>
> To the sole exception of being very careful toward the next LTS to not
> being forced to decide to "go back" or "stay on mainline" for the next
> Ubuntu LTS.
> For example if NGINX 1.17 mainline would be in Ubuntu 19.10 (as we
> track mainline in non-LTS releases), but then there would not be a
> NGINX 1.18 stable available in time for Ubuntu 20.04 to pick up.
> I don't know about the NGINX release schedule too much (is it regular
> and reliable?), maybe this is not an issue at all, but I have seen
> similar issues for other packages so I wanted to mention it.
>

We do have that type of issue though.  We need not look further than the
16.04 cycle for an example of this.  NGINX Stable was cut from NGINX
Mainline the same day as we released 16.04, but we had tracked mainline
right up to that point so there was a version strong only change SRU'd
in the day after release.

For 18.04, NGINX Stable was cut from mainline the same day as final
freeze, but I managed to get that uploaded right before FinalFreeze went
into effect.

NGINX stable versions tend to be cut from mainline right about the time
we are either releasing or are entering final freeze, based on the past
experiences of their release cycles.  Generally speaking however, even
if they cut stable from mainline right after we release, the changes
between Mainline and stable at that point are typically just version
string changes as we saw in the 16.04 cycle.  Maybe a bugfix or two but
usually not new features.

NGINX however doesn't follow a fixed-date release cycle unfortunately. 
Which has contributed to things like the 16.04 cycle had or a last
minute upload before freeze like 18.04 had.  They do, however, tend to
cut the releases within 1 week of our release date (Ubuntu Release Week
+/- 1 week), and by that point the likelihood they add any new features
to the release prior to cutting Stable from that mainline branch is very
very low based on the historical trends (based on watching upstream
changelogs since 2014).

While I can't say with *certainty* there won't be a case where they
release Stable maybe a week after our release, it's so far only been a
version-string-only change, and there's precedent already in place from
16.04 where we can put a version-string-only change into -updates
without disrupting anything.  Consistently, the 'release' of Stable has
been in April around the time we release an LTS version.  And so far,
the only case we've had where NGINX releases Stable when we're in a
final frozen state for LTS when Stable comes out has been the 16.04
cycle and it was a version-string-only change, of which that
version-string change was able to be done as a post-release SRU as it
doesn't change any features and just updates the version string. 
(Otherwise it's been in the FeatureFreeze states, and we've been able to
get it approved, or *right* before FinalFreeze where the Release team
said "Upload it now before we freeze" and it got in).


>
>     -------
>     Thomas Ward
>     Ubuntu Server Team Member
>
>     -- 
>     ubuntu-server mailing list
>     ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com <mailto:ubuntu-server at lists.ubuntu.com>
>     https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server
>     More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
>
>
>
> -- 
> Christian Ehrhardt
> Software Engineer, Ubuntu Server
> Canonical Ltd

------
Thomas Ward
Ubuntu Server Team Member
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