Open Stack

Ed Leafe <ed at leafe.com> writes:

> I think you're missing the reality that intermediate releases have
> about zero uptake in the real world. We have had milestone releases of
> Nova for years, but I challenge you to find me one non-trivial
> deployment that uses one of them. To my knowledge, based on user
> surveys, it is only the major 6-month named releases that are
> deployed, and even then, some time after their release.
>
> Integrated releases make sense for deployers. What does it mean if
> Nova has some new stuff, but it requires a new release from Cinder in
> order to use it, and Cinder hasn't yet released the necessary updates?
> Talking about releasing projects on a monthly-tagged basis just dumps
> the problem of determining what works with the rest of the codebase
> onto the deployers.

Similarly, right now we have easy and uniform points at which we have to
make upgrade and compatibility guarantees. Presumably in such a new
world order, a project would not be allowed to drop compatibility in an
intermediate release, which means we're all being forced into a longer
support envelope for versioned APIs, config files, etc.

If we did do more of what I assume Doug is suggesting, which is just tag
monthly and let the projects decide what to do with upgrades, then we
end up with a massively more complex problem (for our own CI, as well as
for operators) of mapping out where compatibility begins and ends
per-project, instead of at least all aiming for the same point in the
timeline.

--Dan