All pull requests with new functionality need to go to the rolling release before they can be considered for inclusion in more stable release channels.
LTS branches will now be updated in the private organization and then the code will be made available to people who have binaries, and stream branches will be synced when a new image is released to the public. Direct PRs to those branches will no longer be accepted.
That looks like a very much breaking change to me, not perfectly compatible. No more access to source code for LTS branches means it may not be possible to work on bug fixes (not just new functionality) anymore. So, to submit three PRs with bug fixes in the LTS branch to qualify for a subscription, one first needs to have a subscription. I don't think this will encourage more contributors to help the project. Is this intentional?
@marekm: Bugfixes will be towards current (aka 1.5-rolling as of writing) which then is being cherrypicked and backported by VyOS Networks to whatever older releases that needs that and are compatible with the change/fix/added feature.
It will be a much cleaner development of only add fixes/new features to current which then gets backported to older versions if/when needed than to have people commiting stuff all of the place and risk of missing stuff when someone added a fix to 1.4.1 instead of include it in 1.5.0-rolling.
Or am I missing something here?
@Apachez: This may be fine for new features, but some bugs may affect just the LTS releases (for example in the ISC DHCP server, replaced by Kea) or it may be necessary to test the fixes in production environment on LTS (or at least unofficial "LTS" rebuilt from source, which was an option for those without subscriptions for some time thanks to the good work of a few community members - it was fun while it lasted) which happens to be the case with one bug I've been working on (T4600). The bug turns out to be more complex than I first suspected, but I've already spent a lot of time on it, wanted to continue but didn't expect new hoops to jump through. I'm still running 1.3.8 from back when I had access (not anymore) and would like to test just changes to the one accel-ppp package without touching anything else that works otherwise, my setup is fairly complex and I'm not brave enough to try even 1.4.0 just yet, let alone rolling/circinus/stream whatever you name it.
And if I have to make such big changes in my network, I'm going to first investigate other options to move away from VyOS, like Alpine Linux + ifstate + BIRD, or even giving MikroTik a chance again (I had perfectly working IPv4-only PPPoE server, but couldn't get Delegated-IPv6-Prefix to work and that was the reason to migrate to VyOS, feature requested since 2014 and still not done in 2020, will see again maybe it works now and CCR2116 is one-time cost which is cheaper than yearly subscription).
@dmbaturin Just to confirm/clarify, does this mean the public sagitta branches will cease to receive public updates? It will now be impossible to inspect the LTS source code (or, in the case of 1.4 / sagitta, any future updates) without a subscription?