Now that we have an LTS supported release in v7 I would find it useful to see how it compares in terms of features to stable over time; would it be possible to create and maintain this so information does not have to be dug out from changelogs? No need for all detail just major features.
I don't think it's a big thing ... Mikrotik used to declare then-current version M.m.x as long-term pretty much the same time they released version M.(m+1) into stable. And it's always "m" versus "m+1", never "m+2". After some version got released in long-term, it could get another patch level release with urgent fixes to some security problems or bugs.
Where:
- M stands for major version (currently 7)
- m stands for minor version (currently 20)
- x stands for patch version (currently 7)
So current long-term is 7.20.7 ... and stable is 7.(20+1) or 7.21 (actually 7.21.1 but LTS happened when 7.21 (no patch level) was released). When MT will release 7.22 into stable, we can expect that 7.21.X (whichever X will be then current) will be "promoted" into long-term.
So when looking at differences in (major) features between long-term release and stable release, it's enough to look at change log for initial release of stable (currently 7.21) ... since change logs for patch levels contain only changes between patch level releases.
So far "major" changes almost never happened in patch level releases (I'm not saying there were never such cases, but they are very few).
But then we will see if MT will keep to their old method of releasing long-term versions ... they might do it differently in v7.
It’s not a big thing now but it will be a big thing when we get to 7.85; this is why I am asking now, so it can be prepared and then updated so people can decide if they want stability or a specific feature.
When we come to 7.85 ... then one will have to look at change logs between 7.84.4 and 7.85 ... that's all.
The general problem with change logs (and was present in v6 already) is that change log of minor release (e.g. 7.21) contains changes since latest patch level of previous minor release (e.g. 7.20.6 ... which, when considering features, is mostly the same as changes since previous minor release). With each patch level release change log only contains changes since previous patch level release (e.g. 7.21.2 will contains only changes since 7.21.1). And the big problem: change log of release, which gets promoted to long-term, doesn't get updated ... so when looking at change log for long-term release one doesn't see changes since previous long-term release. In most recent case, with 7.20.7 being promoted to long-term, it still only contains differences between previous patch level (7.20.6) even though that one was released in stable channel ... but ideally we would like to see differences since 6.49.19 (which was the last long-term before), which would mean to concatenate all the changes for each and every stable release in v7 major version branch ... in a meaningful way.
And the problem was brought forward in v6 times quite a few times without MT doing anything about it.
Not disagreeing with the gist of your post, but when we come to 7.85, the comparison would be everything between 7.20.7 and all the stable releases that led to 7.85. And I appreciate if this was brought up multiple times before, it’s an indicator that others are interested in this as well.
When 7.85 is coming, must be compared with 8.12ab64 changelog...
Right, because LTS will be 8.12 by the time 7.85 stable arrives.
It's the opposite, if anything...
I'll write this once more: current state, where current LTS is version 7.20.7 and previous LTS version is 6.49.18 (or somewhere near) is a notable exception from what we've seen in the past. Yes, in this particular case it's a RPITA to assemble complete change log between both LTS versions.
More often, difference between stable and LTS version is exactly 1 in the minor part (i.e. LTS is 7.20.7, stable is 7.21.1) and getting change log between both versions should be much easier (but not trivial).
And ALSO on changelog from first v7 is compared from v6.44.6 (?) instead of latest long-term [6.49.19]...
So for the record, you can get it like this (replace 7.21.1 with the stable version you want to compare to): https://mikrotik.com/download/changelogs?channelFilter=&versionFilter=7.20.7-7.21.1
But it is too verbose because it includes everything that changed, not just the major features (like app support coming in 7.22). Maybe Mikrotik could somehow indicate major functions so this can be summarized with AI?