Sounds like a good plan to me Bazsi and makes perfect sense.<br> I never understood why there were so many different versions and don't see how you supported all of those at once.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 4:15 AM, Balazs Scheidler <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:bazsi@balabit.hu">bazsi@balabit.hu</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">Hi,<br>
<br>
First of all, sorry for being absent from this forum for the past couple<br>
of weeks. I've tried to focus here too sometimes, but due to health<br>
issues, I sometimes simply have too little time to do too much.<br>
<br>
But anyway, I haven't stopped thinking about the way forward, and I've<br>
thought I'd share my thoughts about those with you.<br>
<br>
Please note that this is not an official announcement, but rather a way<br>
to gather feedback on my plans. Everything can be changed, and after we<br>
get to an agreement, an "official" announcement will be sent out on the<br>
conclusions.<br>
<br>
First of all, some status information:<br>
======================================<br>
<br>
* syslog-ng 3.0, 3.1 and 3.2 have all produced stable versions, and were<br>
all maintained in parallel.<br>
<br>
* syslog-ng 3.3 is in development, with the primary aim at scaling<br>
syslog-ng to multiple CPUs. It has produced two alpha releases so far.<br>
<br>
* syslog-ng team in BalaBit is busy merging the OSE and PE editions of<br>
syslog-ng, in order to use a common core.<br>
<br>
* the team is basing their work on OSE 3.3, which has been available as<br>
two alpha releases and the git tree, also their tree is also published<br>
as a git repository.<br>
<br>
* while they were porting the PE functionality, they were also busy<br>
porting the new core to new platforms and also of course fixing bugs,<br>
they've found.<br>
<br>
* I've been helping the team in case they've found something that<br>
affected the open source edition as well.<br>
<br>
Then some news about my future plans on syslog-ng versions:<br>
===========================================================<br>
<br>
* I feel that maintaining 3 releases while doing development of a 4th<br>
one is too much for me.<br>
<br>
* I originally planned to employ the same stable/feature release<br>
structure that BalaBit's commercial products are using. There, a stable<br>
release is maintained for a longer time (similar to Ubuntu LTS), while<br>
incremental feature releases are published, with shorter support periods<br>
(e.g. like normal Ubuntu releases).<br>
<br>
* The stable/feature release breakdown would mean, that 3.0 is a long<br>
term release, and 3.1 & 3.2 are short term releases.<br>
<br>
* However, this doesn't match real-life expectations, distributions use<br>
newer versions (and I really applaud this), but this also means that<br>
dropping support for versions included in major Linux distributions<br>
would cause disruptions.<br>
<br>
* I'm really happy that distributions can move faster, and I'd really<br>
like to speed up syslog-ng development. Instead of sticking to an old<br>
release and stuffing in bugfixes and minor features; publish a major<br>
release more often, so that features don't cause problems in stable<br>
releases.<br>
<br>
* Therefore, I plan to abandon the feature/stable release breakdown<br>
altogether. One release will be the same as the other. I'm pledging<br>
support for major releases as long as:<br>
- there's only one release to be maintained in parallel to the<br>
development tree.<br>
- I plan to support a given major release for about a year.<br>
<br>
* This means, that syslog-ng support for OSE 3.0 & 3.1 will be<br>
discontinued, in the not too distant future. I'm planning on a 3 month<br>
period, in order to let people have time to prepare for the upgrade.<br>
E.g. I'd like to announce that these versions are going to be supported<br>
until 31th July, 2011.<br>
<br>
* The definition of "support" is of course vague, I can't provide SLAs<br>
or anything, but I'll do my best to help anyone who has issues with<br>
those versions.<br>
<br>
* Also, if a distribution which carries this version has an issue, I'll<br>
try to help, even past that EOL date, but general questions and problems<br>
found in those versions by users, will be advised to upgrade to a newer<br>
release, or to backport a specific fix themselves.<br>
<br>
Going forward:<br>
==============<br>
<br>
* I plan to announce a feature freeze for 3.3 and publish a beta<br>
version. And at the same time open the 3.4 branch for integrating all<br>
the stuff which has accumulated on the mailing list.<br>
<br>
* Hopefully we can have a stable 3.3 by the time the previous two<br>
releases hit their end-of-life in July.<br>
<br>
What if you disagree:<br>
=====================<br>
<br>
* Until now, I didn't really publish "hard" EOL dates for syslog-ng OSE,<br>
simply because there were not that many of the parallel branches.<br>
However with the increase in development pace, I simply cannot keep up,<br>
and I hate to do a substandard job. Backporting fixes to 3 branches, is<br>
simply too much effort.<br>
<br>
* I'm happy to help building up the proper infrastructure outside of<br>
BalaBit if someone wants to help in maintenance, and release<br>
engineering. But this requires real effort from members of the<br>
community.<br>
<br>
Now, having written this down, please give your feedback, and I'm trying<br>
to work down my backlog and start integrating patches.<br>
<br>
Thanks for listening.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Bazsi<br>
<br>
______________________________________________________________________________<br>
Member info: <a href="https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng" target="_blank">https://lists.balabit.hu/mailman/listinfo/syslog-ng</a><br>
Documentation: <a href="http://www.balabit.com/support/documentation/?product=syslog-ng" target="_blank">http://www.balabit.com/support/documentation/?product=syslog-ng</a><br>
FAQ: <a href="http://www.campin.net/syslog-ng/faq.html" target="_blank">http://www.campin.net/syslog-ng/faq.html</a><br>
<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br>