Important: Leap 15.5 Early planning and steering development towards ALP

14 Apr 2022

      Hello openSUSE!

(sorry for the long but I believe important email)

since the *announcement of next-gen SUSE Linux Enterprise has already
landed, I'd like to take a moment and talk a bit about our last
openSUSE Leap 15.X release and set some expectations. 
openSUSE Leap 15.5 will be based on the binaries and schedule of SUSE
Linux Enterprise 15 SP5. 

SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is using the tick-tock model, where 15 SP4
would be the feature release while 15 SP5 would be more of a bug fix r
perhaps it better to say "maintenance" release.

I did already created an SLE 15 SP5 draft-based *proposal for the
Roadmap. For which I'd appreciate your feedback. I'm a bit keen on
setting deadlines for the earlier milestones (See outlined
alternatives) rather than the SLE Public ones as we did in 15.5. That
in my opinion would result in fewer late changes and would be more
testing-oriented which is what I believe this release needs to be.

From the past, we know that "community originated" changes with a big
impact can happen also outside feature release, such as glibc and rpm
update in the late development phase of 15 SP3. We are in a bit
different situation now, as the parallel development of the "Adaptable
Linux Platform" is now happening publicly in OBS and neither community
nor SUSE has unlimited resources. As the plan is that the next
Community/Enterprise distribution (Leap) will be ALP itself (as it will
be developed open) or closely based on ALP I believe it makes sense to
steer community effort there as it pays off in the long run.

There are some problematic topics that we will have to address. One of
them in SLES 15 SP5+ and Leap 15.5 such as the python *situation. Which
will only get worse with each SLE Service Pack (keep in mind that
unlike for Leap there is a plan for SP7). Specifically for this isseu
we could use existing *code-o-o#17 and interlink it with internal
jsc#PM-3390 (Switch System Python3 to a supported version). 

If you know about other larger topics that are worth fixing in the last
Leap 15.5 release, then please do not hesitate to report them in code-
o-o and set milestone to 15.5. We'll process them on next-next monday
on Community feature meeting (skip one due to Easter).

Any feedback is greatly welcome.

[0]https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/project@lists.opensuse.org/thread/N...
[1]https://etherpad.opensuse.org/p/ReleaseEngineering-20220413#L124
[2]https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Roadmap#Draft_schedule_for_openSUSE_Leap_15...
[3]https://code.opensuse.org/leap/features/issue/17
[4]https://code.opensuse.org/leap/features/issues

Thank you very much for your understanding

Lubos Kocman
on behalf of openSUSE Release Team

Lubos Kocman

Dan Čermák

Lubos Kocman

Lubos Kocman

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