[Koha-devel] Release cycle [was: Ubuntu support]

[Chris Cormack]

On 19 July 2012 08:06, Paul <paul.a at aandc.org> wrote:
> At 03:35 PM 7/18/2012 -0300, Tomas Cohen Arazi wrote:
>>
>> I've been struggling with
>
>
> I'd be happy to try and assist with this documentation.  I struggled with
> 3.8 on our sandbox (maybe less than Tomas, as it's a i386) and will probably
> struggle again if/when I put 3.8.x onto a production 686 server.
>
> For the record, the Ubuntu LTS release cycle is not quite "pure" 2-year as
> Tomas suggests below.  New LTSs are released every two years, but
> end-of-life is after five years (e.g. current 12.04 LTS is valid until April
> 2017.)  The 10.04 server (Lucid) is valid until April 2015, and the older
> 8.04 Heron server is still valid until April 2013 and could probably be
> dropped (together with 10.10 (Maverick) which was never an LTS.)
>
> This Ubuntu cycle has the great advantage of being able to "jump" one LTS,
> and still have a year of "old" validity before deploying "new".
>
> Is there any chance of using a similar "release cycle" as far as LTS is
> concerned for Koha?  I've been trying to follow the emails on this subject,
> but have problems wrapping my greycells around gits and masters, releases
> and sub-releases, bugs on a scale from trivial to blocker, enhancements
> announced as bugs, etc.
>
> I realize, of course, that all of you who put in tireless effort on Koha
> (and I certainly respect and thank you for it), have developed a release
> cycle that suits your input as efficiently as possible.  But also, I have to
> admit that I'm more used to LTS, stable and "beta" (for whatever values of
> "at your own risk" they might take) with enhancements clearly differentiated
> from security updates.  Having followed the Koha Users list as far as 3.8 is
> concerned (and I'm not really suggesting that it's not stable) I'm taking a
> lot more time than I did with 3.6 to consider putting it into production.
> And I haven't even looked at 3.6.2-7 because 3.8 was available by the time I
> got our people trained on 3.6.1
>
>
As with everything with Koha, it's doable. However you need to find
someone who is willing to maintain that LTS release for it, which is
almost a full time job. And 3.6.7 is the current most rocksolid
release. I would definitely not be on 3.6.1 security fixes were pushed
for the 3.6.x branch.

This is where the packages win .. again.

So in short yes, an LTS release is possible, do you want to maintain
it? (Or if not, can you convince someone else to) :)

Chris