[QGIS-Developer] Re-discussing the QGIS release schedule - in combination with the quarantine rule for LTR versions

[Andreas Neumann]

Dear QGIS devs,

The QGIS release schedule for LTR versions was recently "thinned out", as
part of a decision to introduce "manual testing" prior to release - see QEP
239: https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/239 - see
also the release schedule at
https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/development/roadmap.html

Quote from the QEP 239: "LTR releases will no longer have monthly patch
releases, but instead a 4 months cycle releases, coincident with the
release of the stable version".

I can understand the reasoning behind that decision, because "manual
testing" is a lot of work and it was also heard that many users don't
install patch releases too often.

However, the situation is, that there is also a "quarantine rule" - which
is not mentioned in QEP 239 - but it helps to prevent untested patches to
end up in LTR versions, by delaying the backports until the backport was
first tested in the non-LTR stable release. There had been a number of
examples where this quarantine rule helped prevent regressions in the LTR
version introduced by backports in the past. So, I think this quarantine
rule is useful to have.

However, it doesn't match well with the decision to "thin out" the release
schedule of the LTR version. There can be situations where a user will have
to wait 4-5 months, until a backport ends up in an LTR release, which is a
rather long time. We should bring this down to 2 months, like in the past.

My proposal is to "revisit" the decision of the "thinned out" release
schedule and only "thin out", 6 months after a version became LTR.

Any thoughts? Especially from the commercial support providers? How would
your customers react to the fewer patch releases?

Thank you for the discussion,
Andreas

--
Andreas Neumann
QGIS.ORG board member (treasurer)
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