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<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I just wanted to share my thoughts from the users-perspective:</p>
<p>Whenever there is a LTR-Version of a software I use that for
production environments. For QGIS however, I always have both the
LTR and the current version installed. The reason for this is my
personal experience with bug reporting in QGIS. In the past I
submitted a few bug reports, one of them was patched within a
couple of days, but it took two months until it was released in
the LTR, while it was released within the current branch within
one month. Afaik changes have to be approved for the LTR-release,
so it may take more time. Another bug I reported three weeks ago
was also fixed within days, but the backport release went stale
and the backport was closed by the qgis-bot. I don't know if
things will improve if qgis-devs who don't seem to have time to
review backport-changes, need to spent even more time they don't
have on manual testing.</p>
<p>Right now I use LTR for daily work and the current version if I
encounter errors, if LTR is being released only every few months
I'm gonna start using the current version and only switch to the
LTR version if I encounter errors, because it most certainly has
less bugs in the functions that exists in both versions and for
production environments I prefer less bugs.</p>
<p>Cheers<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 28.02.2023 um 08:55 schrieb Andreas
Neumann via QGIS-Developer:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAB2Z92DzpOobHke3oOgxP-K4ZY8aYirLhUMenS2CT4BrDNsVRw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>Dear QGIS devs,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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: <a
href="https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/239"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/239</a>
- see also the release schedule at <a
href="https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/development/roadmap.html"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/development/roadmap.html</a>
<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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".</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>My proposal is to "revisit" the decision of the "thinned
out" release schedule and only "thin out", 6 months after a
version became LTR.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Any thoughts? Especially from the commercial support
providers? How would your customers react to the fewer patch
releases?<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thank you for the discussion,</div>
<div>Andreas<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>
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data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>--<br>
Andreas Neumann<br>
</div>
<a href="http://QGIS.ORG" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">QGIS.ORG</a> board member
(treasurer)<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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