What is LTS?

[SkyManager]

What does LTS stand for?
What are the differences between LTS and normal version?

[Shield]

LTS stands for Long Term Support. It means the LTS versions will still receive bug-fixes for a period of two years
and they will co-exist with newer PB versions. This gives developers more time to migrate to newer versions that often
break compatibility in one way or another with older versions.

See this: http://www.purebasic.fr/blog/?p=437

[netmaestro]

The important aspect of LTS versions is that apart from bug fixes, they get no new functionality and do not participate in any of the changes to structure or approach that the new versions get. The team does their best to keep them just as they are for two years to insulate coders from being forced to update production code during that time. New versions come out during that period but the current LTS version, the "stable version", gets none of its new bells. No bells and certainly none of the whistles. No sir. No whistles.

[SkyManager]

thanks

[Tristano]

I have two question about LTS updates:

When a PB LTS version (let's say v5.44) is updated you get to download a new installer with the same versione number? Ie: a new version of PB 5.44 LTS is released which is to be installed over the previous one?

Or does the LTS cycle refer to a MAJOR.MINOR relase? ie: PB 5.44 is updated to 5.45, and so on?

I was looking at the LTS releases in the museum download page and comparing the dates found in the history documentation page and noticed they differ. For example, PB 5.44 LTS is dated Dec 06, 2016 in the museum download, but in the history page it's dated Nov 19, 2016; does this mean it was first released in Nov and that the latest update was on Dec?

If I install a PB LTS version, the auto-update functionality will only propose/install updates for the current LTS version?

When are LTS releases planned for PB 5.5x and 5.6x?

[ts-soft]

Or does the LTS cycle refer to a MAJOR.MINOR relase? ie: PB 5.44 is updated to 5.45, and so on?

Yes, 5.4x refer to 5,4x but not to 5.5!

When are LTS releases planned for PB 5.5x and 5.6x?

No, i think the next LTS is 5.7 or 5.8?

[Tristano]

thanks @tr-soft.

So basically an LTS version is bound to to the MINOR ver number (with any "x" increase), meaning that no backward compatibility breaking API changes are introduced even if the last (third) digit of the version is increased.

What confused me was the date differences between museum download page and history page, so I though it was the same exact version installer being updated and republished while retaining the same identical version number (I though there was an additional rev number in the actual installation, like rev "a", "b", etc).