New informational JEP: 14: The Tip & Tail Model of Library Development

[Alex Buckley]

On 10/29/2024 3:53 PM, Karsten Silz wrote:
> The key of "Tip & Tail" is that tail trains only get "critical bug fixes 
> and security patches", though "there may be exceptions". So, how do you 
> know what's a bug vs. a feature? A bug fix vs. a critical bug fix? And 
> how do you know if a library follows "Tip & Tail"?

Projects decide for themselves, and should document their decisions.

For example, for the tail trains of the JDK, the JDK Updates Project 
carefully documents the scope of backports from a tip release. Look at:

https://openjdk.org/projects/jdk-updates/
-> "Requesting push approval for JDK Updates"
-> Rule 3

(FWIW time zone data comes from IANA, similar to how character and 
locale data comes from the Unicode Consortium. When you rely on an 
external institution for data, standard operating procedure is to rely 
on them *completely*, not to pick and choose what you take.)

Alex