| Stable Branch Support Policy |
| ============================ |
| |
| Since the `Extended Maintenance policy`_ for stable branches was adopted |
| OpenStack projects will keep stable branches around after a "stable" or |
| "maintained" period for a phase of indeterminate length called "Extended |
| Maintenance". Prior to this resolution Tempest supported all stable branches |
| which were supported upstream. This policy does not scale under the new model |
| as Tempest would be responsible for gating proposed changes against an ever |
| increasing number of branches. Therefore due to resource constraints, Tempest |
| will only provide support for branches in the "Maintained" phase from the |
| documented `Support Phases`_. When a branch moves from the *Maintained* to the |
| *Extended Maintenance* phase, Tempest will tag the removal of support for that |
| branch as it has in the past when a branch goes end of life. |
| |
| The expectation for *Extended Maintenance* phase branches is that they will continue |
| running Tempest during that phase of support. Since the REST APIs are stable |
| interfaces across release boundaries, branches in these phases should run |
| Tempest from master as long as possible. But, because we won't be actively |
| testing branches in these phases, it's possible that we'll introduce changes to |
| Tempest on master which will break support on *Extended Maintenance* phase |
| branches. When this happens the expectation for those branches is to either |
| switch to running Tempest from a tag with support for the branch, or exclude |
| a newly introduced test (if that is the cause of the issue). Tempest will not |
| be creating stable branches to support *Extended Maintenance* phase branches, as |
| the burden is on the *Extended Maintenance* phase branch maintainers, not the Tempest |
| project, to support that branch. |
| |
| .. _Extended Maintenance policy: https://governance.openstack.org/tc/resolutions/20180301-stable-branch-eol.html |
| .. _Support Phases: https://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/stable-branches.html#maintenance-phases |