[wp-hackers] fixes for old versions

[Peter Westwood]

On 6 Jan 2010, at 22:59, Steve Taylor wrote:

> A client is worried about the time needed to fully test their site
> every time there's an upgrade. It is quite a complex system, a custom
> theme interacting with a bunch of plugins, but it's constructed pretty
> solidly. Obviously I'll upgrade on a staging server first, but I think
> only basic tests would be necessary, certainly for point releases.
>
> I can't find any information on this, but out of curiosity, is it
> possible to get *just* security fixes for old WP version? So, say when
> 3.0 comes out and it jumps up from 2.9.4, would there be a "2.9.5" for
> the security fixes? My guess is no, but I thought I'd check.

Our current /desire/ is for the following situation.

If the current release is X.Y then

The previous release X.(Y-1) will receive security updates.
The current release X.Y will receive security and major bug fix updates.
X.(Y+1) will be developed as the next major release.

At some point the security support for X.(Y-1) stops - it has been  
suggested that this is when X.(Y+1) beta1 is released and it would  
definitely be when X.(Y+1) was released.

This has been discussed a couple of times in the weekly dev chat.

As part of this we envisage the following situation from an update  
perspective:

If you are running X.(Y-1).B you will be offered X.Y unless X.(Y-1).(B 
+1) is available
when you have upgraded to X.(Y-1).(B+1) you will again be offered X.Y

If you are running X.Y.B you will be offered X.(Y-1).(B+1) when it is  
available

This isn't a simple thing to implement or achieve and it may need to  
leverage UI changes to make the process seamless.

I stress that this is what we have talked about and what we would like  
to happen.

We have not yet committed to this or when this will start but it is  
something we are actively thinking about - http://bit.ly/4zZ5XH

I hope that makes it a little clearer but once again no guarantees

Cheers

Peter