Evergreen is a community effort to prolong maintenance of openSUSE releases beyond their normal life cycle.

The openSUSE Evergreen team was started to keep openSUSE releases alive by issuing security and stability fixes after the regular 18-month lifespan of openSUSE releases. The team has kept selected releases maintained for an additional 18 to 30 months.

The last Evergreen release was openSUSE 13.1. Evergreen support for openSUSE 13.1 ended in November 2016.

Evergreen

What is it?

"Evergreen" is a community effort to prolong maintenance of selected openSUSE versions as they reach official end-of-life and are listed among the discontinued distributions.

The first Evergreen release was openSUSE 11.1, while the last Evergreen supported distribution was openSUSE 13.1.

Supported distributions

Previous and currently supported distributions can be found in the table below:

How to activate

Version 13.1

There is nothing to do at all. Updates will arrive in the usual update repository.

Version 11.4

In YAST or via zypper, add the update repository as outlined below and accept the new key offered.

sudo zypper ar --refresh -r http://download.opensuse.org/evergreen/11.4/openSUSE:Evergreen:11.4.repo

Nothing else should be needed to make the update stack behave exactly as before with patch, delta-rpm support etc. Security patches and critical bug fixes will flow to the Evergreen enabled openSUSE 11.4 simply by occasionally running YaST Online Update or "zypper patch" in a root terminal.

The user/administrator should be mindful that enabled repositories other than those for openSUSE 11.4 oss, non-oss, packman and Evergreen may both introduce instabilities and YaST/zypper reported inconsistencies which will need to be settled as required for continued security and stability.

How to migrate

There are two possible ways to migrate to some Evergreen covered openSUSE version. The first one use online repository and is mostly covered in the following link. Another way is to use DVD (still can be taken from here) and choose Upgrade during initial screens of Install Process.

Remember - every update can be dangerous to your data, so ALWAYS backup important files.

Note: I didn't test switching from KDE3 (from Evergreen 11.1) to KDE4. If someone knows any issues please provide tips and/or warnings here.

Communication

Communication currently happens via the mailing list evergreen. This list is mainly meant for packagers and contributors but can be used by users as well. Users should also be able to get help on the common openSUSE list or the openSUSE forums as well.

Lead developer of the project is Wolfgang Rosenauer.

Stefan Lijewski is leading Evergreen for the 11.2 version while for 11.4 it's a combined effort.

An update policy is not yet in place, but in general it will be aligned with regular openSUSE maintenance policies.

Team members

Testing

Since we are a small community doing Evergreen we would appreciate if users could join us in testing upcoming updates. For 11.4 this just means to add the following repository to the software management

sudo zypper ar --refresh -r http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/Evergreen:/Maintenance:/Test:/11.4/standard/openSUSE:Evergreen:Maintenance:Test:11.4.repo

and report issues through our mailing list.

Packager information

From Evergreen 11.4 onwards, package updates are performed using the openSUSE maintenance workflow. If you wish to update packages in Evergreen, follow the instructions below.

Version 11.4/13.1

Typically you just want to update some Evergreen package. Then you have to create a maintenance branch, just like regular openSUSE projects. But for Evergreen there are other attributes, where osc should look for affected packages and update project.

Note: beware that the following may not work using the web interface. Packagers are strongly encourages to use osc command line.

The workflow looks like this:

create maintenance branch:

osc mbranch -u Evergreen:UpdateProject -a Evergreen:Maintained $PACKAGE

check it out:

osc co home:LOGIN:branches:Evergreen_Maintained:$PACKAGE

now you should have sources for all Evergreen maintained projects under:

home:LOGIN:branches:Evergreen_Maintained:$PACKAGE

now you can update sources, add patches, test build, document changes and so on

check-in your packages to server

osc ci

at the end you should create or update patchinfo package:

cd home:LOGIN:branches:Evergreen_Maintained:$PACKAGE; osc patchinfo

fill the patchinfo using your favorite editor or webui

if you created patchinfo locally submit them as well

osc ci

at the end create maintenance incident for Evergreen project:

osc mr -a Evergreen:MaintenanceProject

Alternatively (not recommended but useful in certain cases and only works for 13.1):

osc sr openSUSE:13.1:Update

for any to be updated source project.

Version 11.2 and lower

Most information has been moved to the Evergreen 11.1 and Evergreen 11.2 wiki pages.