Proposal: Branching strategy for meta-iotedge

[micahl]

Proposal

Please reply with any feedback / questions before February 25th, 2022.

Track only the most recent stable and LTS releases of yocto.
Track the last stable of IoT Edge and all active LTS releases (simultaneous max is 2).

Active branches	Yocto	IoT Edge	Example
main	Latest stable	Latest stable (e.g. v1.2.x)	main
{yocto LTS}	Latest LTS	Latest stable (e.g. 1.2.x)	dunfell
{yocto LTS}-{IoT Edge LTS}	Latest LTS	Latest LTS (i.e. 1.1.x)	dunfell-1.1

Examples

The table below is how the branching would appear if: 1) the above strategy was already in use then a new yocto LTS released (Kirkstone) and then subsequently there was a new IoT Edge LTS (hypothetically a v1.3).

Today	new yocto LTS (i.e. Kirkstone)	new IoT Edge LTS (e.g. 1.3)
main Yocto target: Honistor IoT Edge recipes: v1.2 dunfell IoT Edge recipes: v1.2 dunfell-1.1 IoT Edge recipes: v1.1	main Yocto target: Kirkstone IoT Edge recipes: v1.2 dunfell still available, not maintained dunfell-1.1 still available, not maintained kirkstone branched from main IoT Edge recipes: v1.2 kirkstone-1.1 branched from kirkstone IoT Edge recipes: v1.1	main Yocto target: Kirkstone IoT Edge recipes: v1.3 dunfell still available, not maintained dunfell-1.1 still available, not maintained kirkstone branched from main IoT Edge recipes: v1.3 kirkstone-1.1 active until 1.1 EOL (Dec '22) branched from kirkstone IoT Edge recipes: v1.1 kirkstone-1.3 branched from kirkstone IoT Edge recipes: v1.3

[darobs]

Commenting so I get notifications on this issue. We are interested to hear public feedback.

[sindelar-fr]

When talking about IoT Edge version tracking does the maximum of 2 simultaneous apply to LTS only - potentially meaning 2 LTS versions + last stable which means 3 in total ?
If we'd have 1.3LTS, 1.5LTS, 1.7LTS and 1.8 does that mean that there will be support for 1.5LTS, 1.7LTS and 1.8 or 1.7LTS and 1.8 only ?
Sorry if I'm complicating it ... :)

[micahl]

@sindelar-fr thanks for asking. Yes, only applies to the LTS. So at most there might be 3 in total (two LTS releases and the one current feature release) until the older LTS hits EOL and then just the two remain (one LTS and the latest feature release).

[vish74]

Is there any update on above proposal?

[micahl]

@vish74 given reactions my read on the proposal is that there aren't major concerns. Next step would be for us to snap to that structure.

Of course, creating a branch is easy. But what I don't know to inform a timeline is how big the delta would be to move the main branch to the most recent Yocto release and what would be needed for Kirkstone once it releases.

What I do know at the moment is that @darobs is juggling multiple things. :) So I'll defer to him on when he expects to have cycles considering his other priorities. And, if there are easy opportunities for others to pitch in.

[vish74]

Thanks @micahl
Hi @darobs are you planning 1.2.x anytime soon? One of our project and development depends on integration with 1.2 IoTEdge. I noticed 1.2.8 of IoTEdge is also released, which captures good amount of bug fixes.

Also, thank you for all the work :) Looking forward to an update in repo.

[sindelar-fr]

Hi! What's the status on this? Is there some time frame for this change to be in effect?

[ruben-sch]

Hi,

there is a lot of progress on https://github.com/Azure/azure-iotedge/releases, new features and new releases. Are there any plans to update to the latest lts version 1.4?

[micahl]

@rschwarz-sotec and @sindelar-fr see #90. Would very much appreciate any early feedback and having folks try out the change once we move it out of a draft PR state.

[micahl]

The dunfell branch now has recipes for the 1.4.x release. If anyone still needs the 1.1 recipes you can find them in the dunfell-1.1 branch.

[micahl]

Migrated the branching strategy info to the repo's top-level README. Closing this out here.