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Roadmap

Abstract

This chapter provides the high level roadmap together with an indicative agenda. Make sure to contact the punch team for details about any item, or if you would like to see a missing item appear.

Conventions

The various acronyms used to characterize punch releases are the following:

  • Alpha : is a non-production-ready early release. It introduces some new features, but other new features will be added later on. APIs and interface may not be stable. Alpha release are provided for pre-production, evaluation or innovation work.
  • Beta : is a release with all new features in. No new feature will be added. It is still under validation. APIs and interface are stable.
  • Release : is a production-ready release.
  • EOL means End of Life : No one should start a new project with an EOL release. It simply means newer releases are production ready and available. EOL releases are not improved with new features.
  • EOS means End of Support : too old releases are not supported anymore by the punch level 3 support team. Anticipate your migrations, the punch team is there to help. Some releases benefit from a longer term support. These are the:
  • LTS means Long Term Support. A LTS release is one that benefits from longer term support. LTS releases are interesting for projects requiring support going beyond the usual 2 years life-time.

Important

Each major release family, for example 6.x, will have at least one LTS release. For example the 6.4 release is LTS. What it means is simply that if you need a punch release for long term projects, without planning any new features or improvements, you can/should decide to go with the 6.4.

If you are ready to regularly update your release, you should instead decide to start with the 6.x release, meaning you can start from the 6.3 but plan to upgrade to 6.4 6.5 etc.. as time goes by.

Both strategies have pros and cons but the rule of thumb is: if you update regularly, you significantly make it easier to ultimately switch to the next major release.

LTS releases benefit from bug fixes and critical security patches only, never from new features.

Here is what it looks like in our small ascii quick view: each '|' indicates the time at which an (alpha|beta|release) is released on our website.

Release    Alpha     Beta    Release    end-of-life     end-of-support

5.5        alpha|    beta|     rel|        eol|             eos|

Current and Planned Releases

Here is the current 6.x release planning.

        2021  |2022  |      |      |      |2023  |      |      |      |2024  |      |      |      |2025
            Q4|    Q1|    Q2|    Q3|    Q4|    Q1|    Q2|    Q3|    Q4|    Q1|    Q2|    Q3|    Q4|    Q1|
           Dec|   Mar|   Jun|   Sep|   Dec|   Mar|   Jun|   Sep|   Dec|   Mar|   Jun|   Sep|   Dec|   Mar|
              |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
6.0 (eol)      
6.1 (eol)
6.2 (eol)    
6.3 LTS       |   rel|      |      |   eol|      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |
6.4 LTS       |  beta|   rel|      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |   eol|
8.0           |      |   rel|      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |      |

Info

The end-of-support (eos) is not indicated. Support is of course gauranteed until eol but may be extended for LTS releases. Contact the punch team for details.

End-of-life (eol) is not indicated for non LTS releases. That does not means you do not have support, it simply means may eol may arrive soon after the next non-LTS release is delivered. For example a 6.4 might be replaced by a 6.5 six months later, at which time the 6.4 might (most probably) turn eol.

As a rule of thumb to go production for long term you should either choose to go with a LTS, or stick with the latest 6.X and be prepared to update (typically) once a year.

Dave 6.x

The dave 6.1 and 6.2 release are built on top of elasticsearch 7.x. It runs on top of jdk 1.8. Support for java11 is planned for 8.0

The 6.3 release has been elected as the LTS release. We strongly encourage all users to migrate from 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2 to 6.3.

The next 6.4 release migrates to opensearch/opendashboard. It is also LTS is is identified as the latest punch release supported outside Kubernetes.

Ella 7.x

The 7.x releases is the first punch release designed to run on top of Kubernetes. It has been in development for a year and successfully deployed on a major production use case.

Kubernetes support is achieved jointly with the Kast Thales companion team and asset.

This said we decided to only release a first official Kubernetes native punch starting at 8.0. The rationale is that the 7.x was still too hybrid.

Frank 8.x

The 8.0 release will be the first official release of the Kubernetes native Punch. Refer to the https://punchplatform.com site to access its documentation.