[cross-project-issues-dev] Notice of a change in Orbit's retention polic

["David M Williams" <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In the past, we Orbit committers thought
we should keep "3 versions" of a package in "active builds".
 But long ago problems with that approach became apparent. Now is
a good time to change the policy as we are making some progress on a new
build system. Before we "cut over" (which I expect to formally
be around the time of the Neon release) we want to have one, minimal, pristine
p2 repo that was based on the old build technology. But, even if we were
not doing that new build system, the new policy makes a lot more common
sense. 

(And, to be clear, this does not change
the policy of retraining "R-builds" -- as before, those builds
are kept "forever".) 

We are changing the policy to keep only
one (the latest) version in Orbit active builds -- with several known exceptions
and most requested exceptions. Above all, we do not want to impact anyone
in the "simultaneous release". And we have good and easy data
on what is used there. The larger risk is impacting projects that are not
part of the release train. Those project will need to tell us if they need
something in active builds (or, they can simply get the older stuff from
a previous R-builds). 

The written version of the policy is
at 
https://wiki.eclipse.org/Orbit/Promotion,_Release,_and_Retention_Policies#Bundle_Retention_in_active_builds

If anyone wants to see the difference between the old policy and the new,
it is there in Wiki History: 
https://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php?title=Orbit%2FPromotion%2C_Release%2C_and_Retention_Policies&type=revision&diff=402896&oldid=371840

The one exception to what is written
is we say "normally old stuff should be removed by M6" -- but,
we are not making that deadline this year. We will be removing a lot of
old stuff soon, so that by M7 we should be relatively clean and stable.

I have opened the following bug to detail
which "active" old bundles will be retained and which removed.
Please comment there if you have a special case that is not obvious. 

Bug 489949- remove "old stuff" from active builds 

If any specific issues or questions,
the best place to ask is in Bug 489949or the orbit-dev
list. 

Thanks, 

P.S. If you haven't yet, a good time
to be sure to get your Orbit bundles from the M6 delivery, so we have a
more accurate picture of what is required and what is not. That M6 repository
is at 
http://download.eclipse.org/tools/orbit/downloads/drops/S20160308060251/repository/