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

[Nyall Dawson]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2023 at 17:56, Andreas Neumann via QGIS-Developer
<qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> 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?

I would VERY much like to see the current monthly LTR patch releases
continued for the lifetime of an LTR release. 4-5 months is just far
too long for users to wait for fixes.

Kind regards,
Nyall


>
> Thank you for the discussion,
> Andreas
>
> --
> Andreas Neumann
> QGIS.ORG board member (treasurer)
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