[Openstack-sigs] [lts] Longer release cycles

Thierry Carrez thierry at openstack.org
Wed Nov 22 09:32:07 UTC 2017


Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Now one could argue that the development of OpenStack has slowed down
> enough that a release cycle of 9 months or one year (including only one
> PTG per cycle) would be a better fit.

Let me expand on that.

As OpenStack matures, it takes longer for features to land as we are
much more careful about not breaking our existing users. There is less
pressure to get a feature landed in a given release. Time just generally
goes slower, and personally I feel like cycles are getting shorter, with
the next release always just around the corner. Who didn't get the
feeling that the Denver PTG was pretty close to the Atlanta one ?

As we are working to make OpenStack development more palatable to
part-time contributors, removing a bit of the time pressure might
actually be a good idea too. Development goes slower when you can only
spend 20% of your work time on it.

Yes, we need to be able to ship early and often, but projects can use
the intermediary releases model to do that. The difference with the
"final" release of a cycle is that we cut a stable branch out of it. We
might not need to maintain a stable branch every 6 months.

Again, this won't solve the upgrade pressure/pain (skip-level upgrades
is your friend there), nor is it going to solve your LTS needs (won't
make branches live for 3+ years). It's just acknowledging that OpenStack
is maturing, development pace is less hectic, and our 6-months cycles
might (might) put unnecessary pressure and overhead on us for limited gains.

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)



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