Hello, # Preambel * I just opened a PR at Homebrew[0], a package manager for macOS, to update Maven to 3.6.0. * First thing was, the Download page[1] still states 3.5.4 as latest and greatest, which is a bit confusing given the change-date tells me it changed just changed today. * And as Homebrew supports versioned packages, users may easily install the latest micro-versions of minors 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and now of course I wanted to add 3.5 to the mix. * One of the Homebrew maintainers now wants to remove at least one older version. I agreed to start a discussion on this list :-) * After some searching I found the 3.0.5 EOL discussion[8], but could not get a real conclusion. And today being a public holiday in the catholic states of Germany I could not hinder myself to think about the:
# Meaning of life - for Maven Core * For Maven 2[4] there is a dedicated page what EOL does mean. * I think maybe we (I am not very active currently, sorry) should at least manifest somewhere the meaning of life of a Maven core release as well. * Some ideas follow, YMMV :-) ## Core gets patched! * Looking at Maven's history page[2], I found no minor release was ever updated to a new micro version after a new minor was released. * So obviously a core version being not in the EOL state does not mean that anything will be patched in a micro release (Or does it? Would a „blocker" bug found in 3.0.5 lead to a 3.0.6?). * After a quick look into Jenkins I only found one job for master but not for older „stable“ branches. master itself is built with 3.5.4. * Are there jobs which still build the older 3.x releases nowadays? Are the old tags buildable? ## All Apache plugins and components are working with all cores! * Does it mean all Maven plugins and components developed by us are tested against 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 and now 3.5 as well as 3.6? * Surefire[5] does have an impressing matrix, but I only see 3.5, 3.3 and 3.2 but not 3.1 or 3.0. * asfMavenTlpPlgnBuild does not include 3.0 or 3.1 either. ## Users may still download the old stuff! * This seems to be the case, all 3.X releases are downloadable from the dist page[7] ## Users may still find the old documentation! * According to the history page[2] old documentation is still available. I am sure there is more that could be said. Best Regards Mirko [0] https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/pull/33572 [1] https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi [2] https://maven.apache.org/docs/history.html [3] https://builds.apache.org/view/M-R/view/Maven/job/maven-box/ [4] http://maven.apache.org/maven-2.x-eol.html [5] https://builds.apache.org/view/M-R/view/Maven/job/maven-box/job/maven-surefire/job/master/ [6] https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf?p=maven-jenkins-lib.git;a=blob;f=vars/asfMavenTlpPlgnBuild.groovy;hb=HEAD [7] https://www.apache.org/dist/maven/maven-3/ [8] https://markmail.org/message/k4o5nkhrvhb3j5a4 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org
