Now what?

[pmatilai]

So we actually got RPM 6.0 out, more or less as promised in terms of both schedule and content.

The schedule was laid down three and half years ago, and we've been pushing rather hard through that time to deliver the planned things, and even some large surprise requirements like the multiple signatures and OpenPGP v6 / PQC support landing in our lap along the way.

At times the pace has felt like bordering on reckless even to ourselves, and I think the community is not going to disagree - for example the rpmbuild changes in 4.20 caused a lot of ripples across multiple distros. We didn't do those disruptive changes lightly, we simply had to blow through some walls to make various new things possible at all. One of the new things was the declarative buildsystem in 4.20, which we're delighted to see being eagerly adopted in the community, despite various shortcomings.

So, now what? I think we're done breaking things for a while.

We're tired from the long climb to the 6.0 hill, the team is down by one and there just isn't a whole lot of time left in the 6.1 cycle either. We landed many important corner stones for future work in the late 4.x releases. So for now, we'll be concentrating on reaping the benefits from the earlier work, addressing various shortcomings and paper cuts of the existing features rather than rushing to implement more new headline features.

We've adjusted the roadmap on rpm.org somewhat already, but I think there will be more changes needed to the plans. Roadmaps are like that, best enjoyed with plenty of salt.