Re: RFC: DPDK Long Term Support

[Christian Ehrhardt <christian.ehrhardt@canonical.com>]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2016 at 5:07 PM, Mcnamara, John <john.mcnamara@intel.com>
wrote:
[...]
>
> LTS Version
> ------------
>
> The proposed initial LTS version will be DPDK 16.07. The next versions,
> based
> on a 2 year cycle, will be DPDK 18.08, 20.08, etc.
>

I can see on the discussions that much more things around this have to be
discussed and agreed, but to some extend we will also just "have to wait
and see" how things work out.
I fully agree to the API change argument to start with 16.07 and the 2 year
cycle (more would be nice, but this means effort and after a while almost
nothing is "easily" backportable).

Never the less I have to ask - as I'd be personally much more happy if it
would be the odd years autumn release that would make the LTS as it would
match our LTS releases much much better.
Otherwise we (Ubuntu) will always "just miss" the LTS by a few months.
First I'd have thought on xx.02 releases, but consuming applications might
need time to adapt and while there are the nice API/ABI guarantees
experience tells me to better leave some kind of time-buffer.

Also this would give all of us a first shot with a shorter (not so long as
in L) LTS to see if the process we defined works out before jumping on a
full 2 year cadence.

So while I see that this is kind of "my problem" I would at least try to
personally ask and vote for LTS being: 16.7, 17.11, 19.11, 21.11, ...

Christian Ehrhardt
Software Engineer, Ubuntu Server
Canonical Ltd