Version 3.0.x and 2.6.x support timeline

[mcaveety]

Hey there,
I'm looking to understand the support of the apicurio-registry releases being pushed out. It looks like 3.0.x is receiving feature updates, but there's also 2.6.x. receiving "final" updates periodically. Could someone please explain the significance of these so-called final updates in comparison to the new 3.0.x releases being cut? Trying to understand if I should expect version 2.6.x to become unmaintained soon, etc. Thanks.

[EricWittmann]

Hi @mcaveety . I understand why there might be some confusion because the 2.6.x releases have a .Final on them and the 3.x ones do not.

The reason is that Red Hat used to have a version format requirement for all projects. The format of the version needed to be major.minor.patch.[Final|RC#]. So all released versions were of that format, for example:

• 1.7.3.Final
• 2.0.0.CR1
• 5.6.22.Final

That formatting is no longer a requirement, so we (the Apicurio team) have dropped the .Final from our 3.x releases.

As for support of 2.6.x vs. 3.0 - I cannot give you a specific timeline for when we would stop supporting 2.6.x, but please consider it deprecated. Red Hat's product (Red Hat build of Apicurio Registry) has support for 2.6 for another six months or so. That's probably the best timeline I can give you. That said, we have complete freedom in the upstream community to do whatever we want. So if we have demand for it, we can continue with patch (bug fix) releases in 2.6.x beyond that timeframe.

[mcaveety]

@EricWittmann Thank you so much for the thoughtful, detailed reply. I really appreciate the clarification and thorough explanation. 😄 you're the best, have a great rest of your day!