Re: [RFC PATCH] docs/about/build-platforms: Refine the distro support policy

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 2/17/23 14:26, Thomas Huth wrote:
> Note: These changes mean that openSUSE is not considered as supported
> anymore (since version 15.0 has been released in May 2018), and
> RHEL/CentOS 8 will not be supported anymore in 3 months (since version
> 8.0 has been released in May 2019).
>
> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>

This has the advantage of being a very simple change to the support 
policy.  However, it has the disadvantage that at this point both SLE15 
and RHEL8 are not hard to support _at run-time_, only the build is a bit 
problematic; so, it kinda throws away the baby with the bathwater.

I have posted another RFC at 
20230217124150.205012-1-pbonzini@redhat.com">https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/20230217124150.205012-1-pbonzini@redhat.com; 
they share the 4 year deadline but it only applies to non-native 
dependencies (which means Python right now).

Thanks for posting this, it's useful to have two different possibilities 
to compare.

Paolo

> ---
>   docs/about/build-platforms.rst | 9 +++++----
>   1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/docs/about/build-platforms.rst b/docs/about/build-platforms.rst
> index 1c1e7b9e11..cdc38f16a4 100644
> --- a/docs/about/build-platforms.rst
> +++ b/docs/about/build-platforms.rst
> @@ -67,10 +67,11 @@ Non-supported architectures may be removed in the future 
> following the
>   Linux OS, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
>   -----------------------------------------
>   
> -The project aims to support the most recent major version at all times. Support
> -for the previous major version will be dropped 2 years after the new major
> -version is released or when the vendor itself drops support, whichever comes
> -first. In this context, third-party efforts to extend the lifetime of a distro
> +The project aims to support the most recent major version at all times for
> +up to four years after its initial release. Support for the previous major
> +version will be dropped one years after the new major version is released
> +or when the vendor itself drops support, whichever comes first.
> +In this context, third-party efforts to extend the lifetime of a distro
>   are not considered, even when they are endorsed by the vendor (eg. Debian 
> LTS);
>   the same is true of repositories that contain packages backported from later
>   releases (e.g. Debian backports). Within each major release, only the most