Re: Release of Tomcat 8.5.46, EOL of 8.5.x?

[Christopher Schultz <ch...@christopherschultz.net>]

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Mark,

On 9/27/19 12:18, Mark Thomas wrote:
> On 27/09/2019 14:38, KM wrote:
>> I saw the announcement of the latest 8.5.x version of Tomcat.
>> Has anyone heard of an EOL date for Tomcat 8.5.x?  I haven't seen
>> anything about it anywhere.  I saw 8.0.x was EOL.  We are using
>> embedded Tomcat 8.5 now and want to upgrade to the latest.
>>
>> We were considering upgrading to 9.0.x, but were wondering how
>> much official time we had before it was required.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any information.
>
> There is no official date.
>
> The Tomcat project maintains 3 major versions in parallel.
> Currently these are: - 9.0.x - 8.5.x - 7.0.x
>
> We always provide at least 12 months notice of EOL.
>
> Major releases are aligned with releases of the Servlet
> specification. The current timetable for the next Servlet spec is
> TBD.
>
> We haven't even announced EOL for 7.0.x yet so you have: - x years
> until Tomcat 10 / Servlet 4.next is released - 1 year for 7.0.x
> EOL

That should be "x+1 year for 7.0.x EOL".

> - y years until Tomcat 11 / Servlet 4.next+1 is released - 1 year
> for 8.5.x EOL

Similarly, that should be "y+1 year for 8.5.x EOL".

> Taking low estimates for x and y of 1 and 2 respectively, you have
> at least 5 years before 8.5.x is EOL.
>
> Take that figure as an "Engineering Estimate". Also known as a
> "wild guess".

It's also worth noting that we have had two ".5" releases over the
past two decades, and those have accelerated the EOL dates of their
predecessors. I'm specifically speaking of Tomcat 5.5 and 8.5, both of
which caused 5.0 and 8.0 so be sunsetted somewhat "early" from the
usual length of time a Tomcat release would normally be supported.

In both cases, the ".5" releases were seen as (a) breaking changes
from their respective ".0" releases and (b) far superior in terms of
technology (or features) and/or compatibility with later versions.

Tomcat 8.0 died early because of significant changes to the Connector
architecture to support H2 (and, somewhat belatedly, Websocket)
including the abandoning of the blocking-IO connectors. Tomcat 9.0 had
to be delayed due to the delays in the release of the Java EE Servlet
4.0 specification. It became obvious that Tomcat 8.5 would be more
useful to the community over the long-term so the decision was made to
build a ".5" version and move forward. Tomcat 8.5 represents all of
the great things in Tomcat 9.0 that didn't depend upon the Servlet API
release but were in great demand by the community. Tomcat 9.0 was
released shortly thereafter with many of the same features, plus
support for Servlet 4.0.

It's conceivable that Tomcat 9.0 may receive the same treatment when
Tomcat 10 begins to take shape, but my "engineering estimate" is that
it's quite unlikely.

- -chris
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