Subject: [RFD] helping distributors by changing the release schedule?

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2025 15:16:14 -0700

Seeing that some distros seem to have botched their own backporting
of gitk patches to maintenance tracks that are older than what we
would support, I am wondering if we can do something to help them,
without bending over backwards beyond reasonable effort that should
be expected of us.  The latest security fixes went to 8 maintenance
tracks but I suspect it is probably 5 or 6 too many.

Here is an idea.

What would happen if we stop tagging any releases, and instead
change the "release" model to tag the commit that happens to be at
the tip of "master" once a month, strictly based on time (so after
Git 2.50.0, we would have Git 2.50.202508 and then the next one
would be Git 2.50.202509, if we decided to do this once every
month)?

If we "release" reasonably often enough to make the distinction
between the tags so smooth and meaningless, would it help in weaning
the distros off of their mentality that pick one "major" version and
stick to that version unless the user upgrades the Operating System
version as a whole?  After all, we do not make changes that are
backward-incompatible at the end-user level, and the "we stick to a
given single major released version to give stability to our users"
mantra that leads distros to ship and support an ancient version is
hurting them (and their users) more than helping.