[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Release 6.1

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

On Sun, 29 Oct 2023, at 17:49, James Almer wrote:
> On 10/29/2023 1:42 PM, Jean-Baptiste Kempf wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> On Sat, 28 Oct 2023, at 18:49, Michael Niedermayer wrote:
>>> noone mentioned 5.1.x and 6.0.x to me before
>> 
>> Our last releases from our two major bracnhes, are a 5.1.3 (which is a LTS branch) and a 6.0.0.
>> 
>> Both of those have not had backports and releases of all the security issues, nor on the major regressions found (if any).
>> 
>> Also, if they had some commits for security reasons, we should have a release at least every 90 days (3 months), because this is the standard for the security issues reporting (after that time, the security community makes them public).
>> And seeing the number of fuzzing fixes, this is likely important.
>> 
>> So, yes, I think having a 5.1.4 and 6.0.1 with the security fixes is of the utmost importance.
>> 
>>> It was just that jb told me
>>> "6.1 opportunity is gone.
>>>   We're too late on the schedule, and noone had time to work on it, so
>>> it is wiser to target 7.0 in January"
>> 
>> Yes, we said we would make a new major version for January (which will slip in February, as usual :D).
>> So, doing a 6.1.0 now, while 7.0 is not far away, might be a lot of work and it might not worth it.
>> Notably since at the time of 7.0, there might be not enough new things to cut a release.
>> 
>> So I'm not against a release for 6.1 at all, but I believe focusing on minor releases for security and on 7.0 with the next major deprecations is more important.
>> If we can do all of those, and keep more or less the timing for 7.0, please be my guest  for 6.1.
>
> Lynne made a list of the things that should (hopefully) make it to 7.0 
> for early 2024 (E.g. YUVJ removal, D3D12 hwdec, Vulkan encode, VVC, 
> IAMF) plus Anton's CLI scheduler work, not to mention it will feature a 
> major version bump and all the deprecated API removal that brings. So 
> even with not a lot of things, the few it will get in these few months 
> will be pretty big and appealing.
>
> 6.1 doesn't need to be supported for too long, but it's a good release 
> to have as it will feature a year worth of development while being 6.0 
> ABI compatible, for those distros that care.

Excellent then.

-- 
Jean-Baptiste Kempf -  President
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