[Development] RFC: What constitutes a "non-destabilising" bug-fix?

[Shaw Andy]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: development-bounces+andy.shaw=digia.com at qt-project.org
> [mailto:development-bounces+andy.shaw=digia.com at qt-project.org] On
> Behalf Of Marc Mutz
> Sent: 9. desember 2012 14:23
> To: development at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] RFC: What constitutes a "non-destabilising" bug-
> fix?
> 
> On Saturday December 8 2012, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> [...]
> > We'll create the releases branch for the RC2 then.
> 
> Ok, trying to summarise, I understand it this way:
> 
> 1. release-critical fixes are submitted and merged to 'stable' now,
>    'release' later, when it exists.
>    No-brainer fixes are also welcome.
> 2. bug-fixes that don't violate string or BC freezes are submitted,
>    but NOT merged, against stable.
>    They will be merged once RC2 is tagged and 'release' is branched off.
>    Maintainers and other reviewers can redirect a fix to 'dev' instead,
>    but all fixes that don't require string or BiC changes should initially be
>    submitted to 'stable'.
>    [Personally, I'd add that if a fix goes to 'dev' instead of 'stable',
>    then the commit message should say why.]

[snip]

I don't agree that all bug fixes should go into stable, judgement should certainly be made, but we can't just put all bug fixes blindly into stable otherwise it will probably end up as being far from stable.  There are times when it would be better for a bug fix to go into dev instead of stable because it may give a much too obvious behavior change for example.

Andy