Fluentd Blog

Scheduled support lifecycle announcement about Fluent Package

Hi users!

We have released fluent-package v5.0.0 (Release Candidate) and the following v5.0.1 (General Availability). fluent-package is formerly known as td-agent and a stable distribution package of Fluentd.

In this blog article, we explains why the concept of channels is introduced.

Why is LTS (Long Term Support) channel introduced?

In the previous versions, td-agent was shipped as quarterly releases in most cases. It sometimes contains fluentd minor upgrade occasionally, which means that not only bug or security fixes, but also contains new features. As a result, there was a case that the stability was affected unexpectedly.

In point view of adopting fluentd (and td-agent) for enterprise services, there was a requirement for the distribution which contains security or bug fixes only and scheduled lifecycle of it.

The LTS release is the answer to support them.

Channels for updates

There are two channels of support lifecycle.

• Normal release
• LTS (Long Term Support)

Here is the difference of these channels.

• Normal release (5.x series)
  • Recommended for early adopters (eager to try new features of Fluentd)
  • Rapid release development (planned semi-annually releases, but it may vary.)
  • Fluentd will be upgraded occasionally
    • Minor upgrade will be applied. e.g. 1.16 => 1.17 and so on.
    • e.g. v5.0.1 (Fluentd v1.16.2), v5.0.2 (Fluentd v1.16.3), ... v5.1.0 (Fluentd v1.17.0)
  • The only latest version will be supported (bug fix will not be backported into older version)
• LTS (Long Term Support, 5.0.x series)
  • Recommended for enterprise services
  • Security and bug fix release only
  • Fluentd will be upgraded only in the teeny version and will stick to 1.16.x series.
    • Thus, the version number will be 5.0.x. (5.1 series will not be shipped)
    • e.g. v5.0.1 (Fluentd v1.16.2), v5.0.2 (Fluentd v1.16.3), v5.0.3 (Fluentd v1.16.4) ... v5.0.x (Fluentd v1.16.x)
  • Next major version will be fluent-package v6.0.0, and will be shipped in 2025.

As for fluent-package v5,

• fluent-package v5 LTS will be supported until March, 2025 (Even though Ruby 3.2 is still supported)
• Until 5.1.0 is released, normal release channel and LTS channel are the same package.

Current releases and future plans:

Happy logging!