So, 2020.3LTS just released, and I just released my render adapters for MicroSplat for the associated versions of the URP/HDRP pipelines.
I took a chance this time and started the upgrade early, under the hope that not much would change between versions. And this time I got lucky (not so much with 2019, which had some last minute changes). However, there appear to be a number of things that are broken in 2020.3LTS which are now causing issues in general. For instance, EditorUtility.CompressTexture is broken.
So right now it’s a bit of a scramble- me to fix any issues in my new adapters, and Unity fixing any regressions or new bugs. And yes, people started asking me for the 2020.3 adapters the day 2020.3 shipped.
We have a bit of a chicken or egg problem here- in that I won’t usually start working on things for the new version until I know the SRPs have stopped being changed. Had I know when that would be, I could have started earlier and reported some of these bugs earlier, possibly preventing them from making it into the LTS release.
So what I think would be good to know is if there’s some kind of deadline to breaking changes to the SRPs before the LTS version is released (or any other feature under rapid development). If I knew that they wouldn’t be changing after a certain point in the 2021.2 cycle, I could start work on things safely before the LTS cycle starts. And I’m betting a lot of other asset developers are under the same boat. I think if there are internal dates like these, making them public and official would help asset developers get onto these versions of Unity earlier.
Of course, it’d be nice if I had the time to play and test the latest releases, but most of us just can’t spend that time until it’s necessary to support those versions.