OpenWrt 24.10 plans (rebase on top of main and tag?)

[Paul Tow]

The 24.10 branch and the main branch are two different git branches.

See:
* https://openwrt.org/about/history#branch_logic
* https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=heads

The 24.10 branch is the branch that 24.10.x stable releases, 24.10 release candidates, and 24.10 snapshots will be made from.

The main branch, on the other hand, is the bleeding edge of OpenWrt at any given point in time. It's where the most active development happens, where all builds are untested, where LuCI is not included by default, and where major changes that potentially break things can potentially be introduced at any point.

APK will **NOT** be used in 24.10, but at the same time it is *already* being used in the main branch and *will continue* to be used there. The developers will have more time (roughly a year) to test and fix the APK integration, to get it working smoothly and reliably prior to the 25.xx branch. 25.xx will thus be the first stable release series to use APK, not 24.10.

Before this announcement, the OpenWrt developers had indicated there was a *possibility* that APK could perhaps be made the default package manager in 24.10 at some point during its release candidate stage. Now they’ve decided that, no, that will not happen at any point during the series. It is a delay, but a delay done for the sake of proper testing, to avoid breaking things for the users.

On 2024-11-27 05:52, Paul D wrote:
> On 2024-11-27 00:41, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
>> Hi,
>>  
>> We just had a meeting and talked about the OpenWrt 24.10 release.
>>  
>> We plan to use opkg in the OpenWrt 24.10 release. We will deactivate the USE_APK switch to prevent users from using apk. 
> 
> 
> Also second the 24.11 motion. 
> 
> One thing which is unclear on first read with this emission: whether work should continue on APK and it will stick around for a future conversion or whether APK will be quietly forgotten about.
> 
> Messaging around APK seems contradictory but suggests APK will remain??: Paul's thread starts "APK! Look!" then "We won't use it (we'll use opkg)" half a page down.
> 
> Recommend:
> 
> First: we will no longer transition to APK for 24.10/24.11 (?)
> Second: But, this will happen at a later stage (???????????)
> Third: Here's some info about APK (if we eventually DO change over??????)
> 
> Instead of:
> 
> First: APK!
> Second: we won't use it.