Re: Policy about support and upgrade "safety"

[Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 02:37:46PM +0100, Jesus Cea wrote:
> 1. What is the support policy for quarterly pkgsrc releases?. Joyent
> policy is crystal clear here:
> <https://www.joyent.com/blog/pkgsrc-2014q4-lts-signed-packages-and-more>
> 
>   - Quarterly releases are only supported until the next release.
>   - 201xQ4 releases are LTS and supported for three years.
>   - No mention about breaking stuff when upgrading (point 2 below).
> 
>   What is the policy for "master" pkgsrc?.

Quarterly releases are only supported until the next release.

That's it.

> 2. What is the policy about upgrading from release to release?. Is
> acceptable to break client code, rename packages, delete packages,
> incompatibilities, etc?.

The question is a bit too general. We try not to break anything in
general, but that's not always possible depending on the upstream, who
might break stuff.

We try to keep all of pkgsrc building. We usually do not rename
packages. We sometimes delete packages, usually when they're obsolete
or there's a particular reason to remove them. Most of the time we
announce this beforehand on the mailing lists.
 Thomas