Honestly, the first thing to clarify is, what it means supported/EOL in Maven terms?. There is a lot of confusion of what it's supported since it's expected that newer versions of Maven should be "backward-compatible" with previous versions of Maven.
If I have a project that was "initially" designed for Maven 3.1.1 (meaning that the pom works perfectly fine with that version) and then I simply upgrade Maven to 3.8.x, the project should "just works"? or there is a need to update the pom.xml/plugins, etc too? And the reverse should be possible? if I have a project designed for 3.8.x, should it work with Maven 3.2.5? At least I know that 3.6.x and 3.8.x should be more or less "backward-compatible", but it's hard to tell if others are. Second, supported means that it still receives updates or patches, and gets released every now and then, this is not true at all, the last version of Maven 3.1.x was 3.1.1 released on 2013-10-04, the other name for "supported" of older versions is in "maintenance", that might receive critical fixes, yet again this might never happen. In the same line, Maven 3.1.x requires Java 5 which is essentially dead since a very long time ago, "supporting" Maven 3.1.x is pretty much nonsense. (Here I'm talking about Maven core). Even trying to "support" Maven 3.2.x (3.2.5 released on 2014-12-20) as it requires Java 6 is impractical, as Java 6 was EOL 3 years ago (31 Dec 2018). In other words if a plugin "claims" to support Maven 3.1.1, it should work with Java 5, in any other case it's just "partially" compatible and having a table of compatibility is required as it's not true that it "supports" Maven 3.1.1. So, it's hard to define what it means "supported" and "EOL" here, does it mean that "plugins" are supported? in other words, that if a new plugin is released it should work with Maven 3.1.0? (even if it's hard to test on that combination), the CI matrix should test plugins with a combo of Java 6, Java 7, Java 8, Java 11 and Java 17, multiplied by Maven 3.1.1, Maven 3.2.5, Maven 3.3.9, 3.5.4, 3.6.3, and 3.8.5, which I seriously doubt it happen. In the end, if my project was initially designed for Maven 3.1.1, I do not expect that I (or many other users) will just update plugins without also testing or updating to newer Maven versions too, so, having plugins "supporting" such older versions of Maven is not necessarily a good thing, it might make sense if the "supported" definition is latest + 2 older versions (3.8.x, 3.6.3, 3.5.4), this if we are speaking of plugins, as for Maven itself is still not clear to me what it means "supported" as once a new versions is released (3.8.x) the older one never get any update (3.6.x). And yet again, we enter into a new conflict with this definition, if Maven 3.9.x requires Java 8 and a lot of plugins are also moving to Java 8, then it effectively means that "older" versions will not be supported by plugins (in the combination of Java 6 and 7). Welcome to the pandora box! On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 11:08 AM <herve.bout...@free.fr> wrote: > > you're focusing on Maven core only > I'm talking about Maven = core + plugins > > and on Maven core, 3.9 and master are for new features, 3.8 is a > stabilisation branch only (bugfixes) = the intent of initial message from > Tamas > > older releases are stable: yes, we don't expect fixes because they are > considered stable > > does stable mean EOL? > > no, because it would mean that we only support unstable versions of Maven core > > ----- Mail original ----- > De: "Slawomir Jaranowski" <s.jaranow...@gmail.com> > À: "Maven Developers List" <dev@maven.apache.org> > Envoyé: Dimanche 10 Avril 2022 21:20:33 > Objet: Re: We need to lay down strategy > > our CI has running build for branches: > - master > - 3.9.x > - 3.8.x > > It is only versions for which we can do changes, for others we simply don't > have running infrastructure, so the rest of the versions should be > officially mentioned as EOL. > > To be clear we also should add information what kind of change will be > accepted for specific version, like: 3.8.x, 3.9.x only critical regression > bugs as Tamás mentions > > niedz., 10 kwi 2022 o 19:59 Hervé BOUTEMY <herve.bout...@free.fr> > napisał(a): > > > Le dimanche 10 avril 2022, 09:56:46 CEST Michael Osipov a écrit : > > > Am 2022-04-10 um 09:10 schrieb Hervé BOUTEMY: > > > > > > >> I think that the truth is that versions less than 3.8.x are also EOL. > > > > > > > > no > > > > please read the EOL message we took a lot of discussion to define for > > > > Maven > > 3.0.x: > > > > "Maven 3.0 has now reached its end of life. New plugin releases will > > > > require > > Maven 3.1 or later." > > > > > > > > yes, the definition of what "EOL" and "supported" mean for a project > > like > > > > ours > > is not so easy: finding the right message is not easy > > > > > > > > > But I don't think that this is the full truth. > > > What we actually do is to compile against a specific Maven version, but > > > only test latest. I don't expect that everyone tests with 3.1.x, 3.2.x > > > and so it -- I don't and will not. > > 1. our CI tests quite a good number of situations: we don't expect manual > > test > > from every committer > > 2. even if we don't fully test every detailed situation, we defined our > > minimum > > required Maven version to show that we support these situation > > 3. if you go that route, please define what support means given our OSS > > nature > > > > let's be reasonable at every level > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org > > > > > > -- > Sławomir Jaranowski > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org
