Proposal to support only the latest minor release

[gbartolini]

In the "Supported release" page we currently state:

We support the latest two minor releases, and we aim to create a new minor release every two months.

We supported the latest two minor releases, given that we could release a minor version every two months. Unfortunately, we have not been able to respect this timeframe. 1.21 took 6 months. 1.23 is already 4 months on the go.

I propose to support only the latest version as a community and keep the additional month two additional months for the previous version.

[gbartolini]

Obviously this proposal assumes that we don't lower the guard on continuous delivery.

[sxd]

This indeed makes a lot of sense since keeping more than one version in opensource it kind of hard, and will help us to focus more on new features than keep really old versions

[armru]

Yes, it makes sense. There is only so much that we can do as an open-source project.

[fcanovai]

I believe we're making our life more difficult in multiple ways:

1. Small features are added to release branches. If we kept features to main, and backported only fixes there would be less backporting work.
2. We have multiple release branches supported
3. We don't release often, so backports piles up

I believe all these aspects are increasing the required amount of work, not just the second one.

Having said all that, I think that we could drop support for the second minor, but let's consider that users will only have one month to upgrade after a new minor release.

[gbartolini]

Shall we extend that period Francesco?

[fcanovai]

I think we could do a couple of months

[leonardoce]

I think we should keep on with the continuous delivery approach. I agree with supporting the latest minor version.
Let's give people two months of time to update.

[gbartolini]

Ok, so at the moment we are converging towards:

• the latest minor version
• extend the additional support to 2 months for the older version

[gbartolini]

@mnencia and @phisco thoughts?

[phisco]

Makes sense to me! We extensively test upgrades, so users should not be scared of upgrades, and it's a huge effort on us to support multiple versions, with little to no benefit. 👍

[mnencia]

I vote for reducing the number of versions. The best version of the operator is always the last one, and I do not see big advantages in maintaining multiple versions.

[smiyc]

I agree with only supporting the latest minor version but would vote for 3 additional month.

I have one maintenance window each month.
After a new release I upgrade the demo cluster asap (outside of the maintenance window).
In the 1st window I do test and in the 2nd prod.
So depending on the release date I could keep up with a supported prod environment, but if the release is shortly after my window, I can't.

[gbartolini]

I think 3 months is a good compromise.

[gbartolini]

Adopted in 1.23.0