On 2023-05-12 09:32:19 -0400 (-0400), Scott Little wrote: [...]
I'd like to suggest the branches be 'frozen', as in accepting no further updates, and tagged with <branch>-eol, but otherwise allowed to continue to exist for several months if not a year. That would allow downstream projects a reasonable period to switch from branch to tag and avoid a period of breakage.
We can't easily make changes proposed for those branches get automatically rejected without deleting the branches, but also the deletion is meant to send a clear and noticeable signal to anyone still trying to pull from it, while an EOL tag may go unnoticed.
The branch was effectively frozen (as in no new stable point releases were made) the moment normal maintenance of that branch ended, and then several years went by where users were expected to stop relying on it. The EOL tagging and subsequent branch cleanup is the final signal to anyone why may have not otherwise noticed we stopped maintaining and releasing the branch years prior.
We've had some discussions about the term "extended maintenance" being confusing to consumers who think that means the branch is still maintained and recommended for direct use. I've been advocating we refer to everything after the end of normal maintenance as "unmaintained" in order to make that more clear, though there was another suggestion for "community maintenance" which might be closer to the truth for some projects.
Second point. Is there a separate mailing list to announce major events such as EOL of a branch? It's hard to pick such announcements out of a general mailing list.
I can see making a case for announcing the end of normal maintenance on the openstack-announce mailing list. EOL of individual projects on the other hand is going to be too high-volume for an announcements since they are not required to coordinate that with each other and can do so any time between the end of normal maintenance and the mandatory sunset.