[Development] Setting up time-based releases for the project

[joao.abecasis at nokia.com]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> One think I'd like to know from others is: what does dripping-bucket contain
> when changes are not going in, in-between releases? From the description and
> from the graph, it sounds like that branch contains the next release before
> it is tested out. That is, it's a branch that is in a state of Release
> Candidate all the time because the final notches on the actual release
> haven't been done.

Experience so far shows that there are always show-stoppers that need to get
fixed in the release branch before we can get a release out. These are caught
in the release branch because that's when changes get the most widespread
testing and issues are bound to be found.

And that's another important aspect I did not mention in the original post and
which is worth mentioning.

Fire-hose is a development branch, things may be variously broken at all
times. Typically, developers in this mailing list will be tracking that
branch.

Leaky-faucet is deemed beta quality and somewhat more stable. At the very
least it shouldn't break as often. We can expect that more people will be
willing to track this branch with their own development.

Dripping-faucet is the stable branch. Anyone who can live out of a git
repository (as opposed to packaged releases) will track this branch by
default. The biggest blunders will hopefully have been fixed by the time
changes reach this branch.

In this setup stability also equates to exposure and thus incoming bug
reports.

> If we move the release testing onto leaky-faucet, then dripping-bucket
> contains only the latest release, with at most a critical patch or two.

That depends on whether we consider that typical patch release traffic has an
impact on release readiness. (Can bug fixes introduce new regressions? :-)

Cheers,


João