<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div>Tip & tail is necessary for stability. But is it sufficient?</div><div><br></div><div>To me, stability depends on the answer to this question: When and how do I have to upgrade when I want to stay up-to-date with tail trains only? I think the JEP does not mandate when tail trains appear or how long they live, which does not give me the stability I want. </div><div><br></div><div>The tip & tail example from section “Backport as little as possible”, for instance, has tail trains at seemingly random intervals. Some “tip generations”, like 1 and 4, don’t get tail trails at all. And it’s not clear whether the tail trains have the same duration. This example does not give me stability.</div><div><br></div><div>The first real-life example in the JEP does: In Java, I either upgrade every six months or every 2-5+ years, depending on my JDK distribution’s LTS duration. That’s perfect stability to me. </div><div><br></div><div>The second example, Spring Boot, is not as stable: I get monthly tail releases. That's great. And I could switch tail trains every six months but have to every twelve. That’s not great but good.</div><div><br></div><div>But I don’t know when a Spring Framework generation ends. And new generations typically raise the JDK baseline (6 won’t) and may force major dependency upgrades, which could be a lot of work for me. That’s bad. For example, generations 3 and 4 lasted four years, 5 got five years, and 6 will only last three. The last Spring Boot tail release of a Spring generation typically lasts 18 months. But the extra six months may not be enough to make the jump.</div><div><br></div><div>Is my definition of stability too strict? Or do I have a minority definition of stability?</div><div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; display: inline !important; float: none;">Karsten Silz</span><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none;">
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