Julia 1.6 was released on 24 March 2021, but wasn’t declared LTS until Dec 2021 (previous LTS, 1.0, was LTS for just over 3 years). Should we go for 18 month LTS support as node.js?
There has never been a promise for how long long-term support means for Julia (and I’m not even sure how desirable an LTS is, with juliaup now supported on all platforms), and 1.6 is a non-ideal LTS version (has known bugs that are not fixed, or at least one, likely rather obscure though), and incompatible syntax with newer versions (and a different RNG).
So I want to get rid of Julia 1.6 as LTS sooner rather than later. We could have a new LTS, even for some time concurrently, would 1.8 be a good candidate?
LTS means, down to 6 months for some projects, up to 10+ years, or 18 months for the only language (JavaScript, i.e. node.js) there in that projects list: Long-term support - Wikipedia
Should we emulate their schedule (maybe also for new releases every six months?):
New semver-major releases of Node.js are branched from main every six months. […]
Every even (LTS) major version will be actively maintained for 12 months from the date it enters LTS coverage. Following those 12 months of active support, the major version will transition into “maintenance” mode for 18 months.
If you are not sure how desirable an LTS is, I would assume you don’t need it personally, so I’m not clear on your motivations to “get rid of Julia 1.6 as LTS sooner rather than later”… maybe people using LTS prefer longer terms LTS versions, even if the current one as some problems?
Two concurrent LTS versions will probably not happen, as it’s more work.
I would be ok with 1.8 being declared immediately just to get 1.6 dropped as LTS (I don’t use LTS and even use master), but I’m fishing if people think it’s too soon, or if there’s actually much interest in LTS at all. Of course it’s more work to have two (or more, not suggesting that) LTS, so I was thinking at best a short overlap, depending on for how long people want the LTS supported, which hasn’t been discussed as far as I know.
I’m not sure what the SciML policy is, but personally, I’m ready to stop adding new features to all but the latest release whenever.
If someone really wants LTS julia, they’re unlikely to want to be on the latest package versions.
Almost all breakages and regressions I see are from the package ecosystem, not new Kulia releases.
So finding new Julia releases too onerous but keeping up with the package ecosystem acceptable would be an odd preference.
Julia 1.0 was the LTS for 3 years. Julia 1.6 has been the LTS for barely over 1 year. I think it’s a little premature to be calling it dead; 1.6 was a fantastic release and is still going strong.