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Defining a word for all current releases #359
Description
In discussing with a friend, I realized that we don't have an actual word for the corpus of releases that are currently being worked on / not EOL.
Here's a sentence as an example:
Node.js versions 6, 8, 10 are the only [word] releases currently. Soon Node.js version 11 will be be too.
Both of us instinctively reached for "Active" but that's currently a word used as a part of LTS terminology.
Node.js versions 6, 8, 10 are the only active releases currently. Soon Node.js version 11 will be be too.
As far as I know, we don't have a word that defines this. I think it's a useful word to define, as I've reached for some kind of word like this several times.
Some possibilities:
- Circulated
- Supported
- Operating
- Effective
Activity
vsemozhetbyt commentedon Sep 15, 2018
"Supported" seems to be the most exact and substantial word? Others seem a bit evaluative and fuzzy.
MylesBorins commentedon Sep 15, 2018
targos commentedon Sep 16, 2018
I say supported.
BridgeAR commentedon Sep 16, 2018
Both, supported and maintained sounds good.
joyeecheung commentedon Sep 17, 2018
I'd go for supported instead of maintained to avoid confusion about "maintenance mode"
mhdawson commentedon Sep 20, 2018
I prefer supported.
DrEVILish commentedon Sep 20, 2018
Current Releases
Maintained Releases
bnb commentedon Oct 1, 2018
@joyeecheung valid point, agreed!
@DrEVILish extending @joyeecheung's point, we have the "Current" release line which is the release line that's in active development. Current releases (and maintained releases) could theoretically get easily confused.
Seems like
Supportedis the only word that doesn't collide with another term and has... support? 😁targos commentedon Dec 8, 2018
@bnb what's the next step? Would you like to document this somewhere?
bnb commentedon Dec 15, 2018
@targos yes, documenting that somewhere would be ideal. It would be awesome if we could have a
Glossarysection of theREADME.mdthat included all the terms we use (including this) 🤔rvagg commentedon Dec 18, 2018
I say "actively supported release lines" whenever I do security releases that need to cover them all. I think also if you're going to clarify this terminology you should be clear about "releases" and "release lines" too cause that gets messy.
BridgeAR commentedon Apr 29, 2019
I added this to the release agenda to decide on a specific wording that we then use consistently.
3 remaining items
BethGriggs commentedon Sep 9, 2019
I think I prefer "supported" to "maintained" - partially due to the overlap with our terminology "maintenance". I also think "supported" works well with our use of "long-term support"- where LTS versions are a subset of the "supported" versions.
mhdawson commentedon Sep 10, 2019
We discussed in the package-maintenance meeting today and I've submitted a PR to change
maintainedtosupportedbased on this feedback. nodejs/package-maintenance#257Reading the rest of the doc as I did the update I also see that there would have been potential for confusion if we'd continued to use maintained as that word is used throughout the doc and not necessarily as it was defined in the table.
mhdawson commentedon Sep 10, 2019
PR also clarifies a bit what 'all' means as it's intended to cover support all versions regardless of EOL status.
BethGriggs commentedon Sep 12, 2019
Next steps here are to PR the definitions to the nodejs/release and nodejs/node documentation
mhdawson commentedon Sep 12, 2019
@BethGriggs I'll volunteer to PR into nodejs/release and ndoejs/node doc unless somebody else wants to do it. Do we just want to add the definition of
supportedor more than that?BethGriggs commentedon Sep 12, 2019
@mhdawson - I think at some point it would be worthwhile creating a clear "definition"/"glossary" section for Release terminology, including definitions of "Active LTS", "Maintenance LTS", "Supported", etc. But we could just add the one-sentence definition in the meantime if you're happy to volunteer for that?
dominykas commentedon Sep 12, 2019
I think it would be great to define all the keywords there, standardize on that a little? There's multiple use cases for them - upgrade policies, CI settings, etc.
mhdawson commentedon Sep 13, 2019
@BethGriggs happy to volunteer, will look at it next week. @dominykas I agree will look to see how I can fit the list in.
mhdawson commentedon Nov 8, 2019
Sorry for the delay, still have this on my list.
mhdawson commentedon Jan 21, 2020
I went through the existing doc a while back to find if there were any references in ndoejs/node and nodejs/release that needed to be updated and did not find any.
I guess the next step is to create a new section with the terminology.
mhdawson commentedon Jan 21, 2020
For reference this is the list in the PACKAGE-SUPPORT.md section based on the feedback from this discussion: https://github.com/nodejs/package-maintenance/blob/master/docs/drafts/PACKAGE-SUPPORT.md#support-target
BethGriggs commentedon May 21, 2020
We've updated our documentation in the README to state that we will use the word 'supported':
Package Maintenance are also adopting this terminology.