The initial website page is difficult to read because of
the large amount of links from different parts of the whole
documentation. Most of all those links come from their
index page referenced in the section 'Contents' on the side.
Another issue is that because the page is static, new links
might not get included.
This patch simplifies the main page by highlighting the project
level documentation. The static part is reduced to the main
level index pages.
All the links are available by clicking on 'Full Table of
Contents' at the end of Documentation section.
Signed-off-by: Flavio Leitner <fbl@sysclose.org>
Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
While only 2 branches are formally maintained (LTS and latest release),
OVS team usually provides stable releases for other branches too, at
least for branches between LTS and latest.
When transition period ends for an old LTS, we, according to
backporting-patches.rst, could stop backporting bug fixes to branches
older than new LTS. While this might be OK for an upstream project
it doesn't sound like a user-friendly policy just because it means
that we're dropping support for branches released less than a year
ago.
Below addition to the release process might make the process a bit
smoother in terms that we will not drop support for not so old branches
even after the transition period, if committers will follow the
"as far as it goes" backporting policy. And we will provide stable
releases for these branches for at least 2 years (these releases could
be less frequent than releases on LTS branches).
After 2 year period (4 releases) committers are still free to backport
fixes they think are needed on older branches, however we will likely
not provide actual releases on these branches, unless it's specially
requested and discussed.
Additionally, "4 releases" policy aligns with the DPDK LTS support
policy, i.e. we will be able to validate and release last OVS releases
with the last available DPDK LTS, e.g. OVS 2.11 last stable release
will likely be released with the 18.11 EOL release validated.
Signed-off-by: Ilya Maximets <i.maximets@ovn.org>
Acked-by: Flavio Leitner <fbl@sysclose.org>
Acked-by: Kevin Traynor <ktraynor@redhat.com>
Standardize that we will mark a new release as LTS every two years
to avoid situation where we have a really old LTS branch that no-one
actually uses, but we have to support and provide releases for it.
This will also make release process more predictable, so users will
be able to rely on it and plan their upgrades accordingly.
As a bonus, 2 years support cycle kind of aligns with 2 years support
cycle of DPDK LTS releases.
Still keeping a window for us to discuss and avoid marking some
particular release as LTS in case of significant issues with it.
Signed-off-by: Ilya Maximets <i.maximets@ovn.org>
Acked-by: Flavio Leitner <fbl@sysclose.org>
Acked-by: Kevin Traynor <ktraynor@redhat.com>
While LTS change happens, according to release-process.rst, we're
immediately dropping support for the old LTS and, according to
backporting-patches.rst could stop backporting bug fixes to branches
older than new LTS. While this might be OK for an upstream project
(some upstream projects like QEMU doesn't support anything at all
except the last release) it doesn't sound like a user-friendly policy.
Below addition to the release process might make the process a bit
smoother in terms that we will continue support of branches a little
bit longer even after changing current LTS, i.e. providing at least a
minimal transition period (1 release frame) for users of old LTS.
Effectively, this change means that we will support branch-2.5 until
2.15 release, i.e. we will provide the last release, if any, on
branch-2.5 somewhere around Feb 2021. (I don't actually expect many
fixes there)
Signed-off-by: Ilya Maximets <i.maximets@ovn.org>
Acked-by: Flavio Leitner <fbl@sysclose.org>
Acked-by: Kevin Traynor <ktraynor@redhat.com>
The last few OVS releases have included a "soft freeze" stage in the
release process, but this stage has never been formalized in the
documentation. This adds a description.
Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
Acked-by: Ian Stokes <ian.stokes@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
This is mostly docs moved from the top-level directory and content
scraped from the Open vSwitch website source [1].
[1] https://github.com/openvswitch/openvswitch.github.io/
Signed-off-by: Stephen Finucane <stephen@that.guru>
Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp@ovn.org>
