[FFmpeg-devel] [RFC] Release 6.1

[James Almer]

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.