[openstack-dev] [packaging] Extended Maintenance and Distro LTS coordination

Corey Bryant corey.bryant at canonical.com
Thu Jun 7 12:00:40 UTC 2018


At the summit in Vancouver there were sessions discussing Extended
Maintenance. The general focus was on keeping upstream branches open in
extended maintenance mode after 18 months rather than EOLing them. If at
some point fixes cannot land in a given project's branch, and there is no
reasonable solution, then the branch would need to be EOL'd for that
project.

Personally I think this is great. In Ubuntu we want all fixes to land
upstream first for supported releases, but once upstream branches reach
EOL, we end up carrying local patches in our packages. I assume other
distros do the same, so any sharing we can do here would make shorter work
for all involved.

During the first EM session, David Ames mentioned that perhaps distros
could coordinate on what releases will be their LTS's to enable more focus
on specific EM branches and Doug Hellman suggested an email to the list. I
don't know how other distros choose their OpenStack LTS's or if anything
will change from distro to distro but it seems to be worth a discussion.

I'm going to give an overview of the Ubuntu OpenStack LTS releases below
(current and planned). What are other distros' LTS's (current and planned)
and do we line up at all?

Ubuntu LTS (for background)
--------------------------------------
Every 2 years in April a new Ubuntu LTS is released and support supported
for 5 years. For example:
* Ubuntu 16.04 - released in April 2016; supported until April 2021
* Ubuntu 18.04 - released in April 2018; supported until April 2023
* Ubuntu 20.04 - released in April 2020; supported until April 2025

Ubuntu OpenStack LTS
-------------------------------
Ubuntu OpenStack LTS is provided in 3 different scenarios:
1) Each Ubuntu LTS supports the most recent release of OpenStack available
at the time of the release for 5 years.
2) Each N-1 Ubuntu LTS supports that same release --^ of OpenStack for 3
years.
3) Each Ubuntu LTS supports the latest release of OpenStack that is
available as of April of odd years for 3 years.

Examples of 1:
* Ubuntu 16.04 - OpenStack Mitaka supported for 5 years (via Ubuntu 16.04
archive)
* Ubuntu 18.04 - OpenStack Queens supported for 5 years (via Ubuntu 18.04
archive)
* Ubuntu 20.04 - OpenStack U***** supported for 5 years (via Ubuntu 20.04
archive) [1]

Examples of 2:
* Ubuntu 14.04 - OpenStack Mitaka supported for 3 years (via Ubuntu Cloud
Archive)
* Ubuntu 16.04 - OpenStack Queens supported for 3 years (via Ubuntu Cloud
Archive)
* Ubuntu 18.04 - OpenStack U***** supported for 3 years (via Ubuntu Cloud
Archive) [1]

Examples of 3:
* Ubuntu 16.04 - OpenStack Ocata supported for 3 years (via Ubuntu Cloud
Archive)
* Ubuntu 18.04 - OpenStack Stein supported for 3 years (via Ubuntu Cloud
Archive) [1]

[1] Future OpenStack release; assumes the same OpenStack release cadence
continues

If you'd like to see a visual of this release cadence, there's a chart at
https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life under "Ubuntu OpenStack
release end of life".

Thanks,
Corey
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