NGINX in Ubuntu: Course of Action - Opinions Please

[Seth Arnold]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 12:54:03PM -0400, Thomas Ward wrote:
> If we go NGINX Mainline, we must support 1.9.x and many new additionally
> developed features for both Wily, and likely the next LTS (16.04). We
> must also handle bugs that come from those additional features, some of
> which we won't easily be able to resolve.  And as we know, an
> actively-developed branch is not necessarily the most stable.

I think following Debian and importing 1.9.x makes sense:

- it's traditional
- it'll provide some bugreports to nginx from enthusiast users
- it'll provide us with knowledge of what's coming in (hypothetical) 1.10
  before 16.04 LTS

Going with 1.9.x now does run the risk that we'll be "stuck" with it for
16.04 LTS rather than 1.10. Hopefully it'll just be a few small changes
away from the 1.10 that nginx is planning on releasing in April. (If
we're lucky we might even get them to aim for an early-enough release
that 1.10 can be included in 16.04 LTS.)

But I think being "stuck" with 1.8.x in 16.04 LTS isn't a great position
to be in -- people will want the new features -- probably better http/2.0,
generic tcp loadbalancing, SO_REUSEPORT, etc. And I don't think 1.8.x will
be a significant improvement in security either -- on the one hand, it
will have received a year's scrutiny and updates, on the other hand, all
the patches will be one year and a development cycle behind.

I think on the whole the balance suggests moving to 1.9.x sooner.

Thanks
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