[Development] To patch release or not (was: Bug fixes to Stable or Dev branch?)

[Gladhorn Frederik]

Hi Tuukka and all,

just like Albert said, it's not so much about the time until the next release. It's more about delivering even more stable Qt releases with less changes that are more reliable.
While I generally think that we are doing quite a good job in improving the quality of Qt with both minor and patch releases, some people really appreciate releases with those few bug fixes like Albert mentioned.
Looking at the stable branch it seems like there are 116 commits for qtbase alone in the stable branch.

I have heard from quite a few people that they would really appreciate those patch releases and ideally we get into the habit of making releases so smooth that it doesn't cost any extra effort. (we're not quite there but getting better and better at making releases)

Greetings,
Frederik


(forgive me for top posting, I'm on a broken web mail client here...)
________________________________________
From: Turunen Tuukka
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 6:45 PM
To: Gladhorn Frederik; development at qt-project.org
Subject: VS: [Development] Bug fixes to Stable or Dev branch?

Hi,

Regarding Qt 5.2.2 - let's see how well 5.2.1 is received. We have now 1,5 months shorter cycle than the usual 6 months for Qt 5.3. I agree that it was a long wait between 5.1.1 and 5.2.0.

Yours,

Tuukka
________________________________________
Lähettäjä: development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=digia.com at qt-project.org [development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=digia.com at qt-project.org] käyttäjän Gladhorn Frederik [Frederik.Gladhorn at digia.com] puolesta
Lähetetty: 5. helmikuuta 2014 17:46
Vastaanottaja: development at qt-project.org
Aihe: Re: [Development] Bug fixes to Stable or Dev branch?

We have the branch model to make it easy to choose the right branch, usually without worrying about the releases too much.

"Normal" bug fixes go always to stable.
Stable is guaranteed to be merged into dev before the next release, so you'll never have to worry, no patch gets lost.

Show stoppers just before the release might have to go into the release branch, this should really be the exception.

Sometimes a bug is less critical and/or involves huge changes, these may have to go into the dev branch pending the approvers and your judgement.

By the way, I heard quite a few requests for more patch releases, maybe we should aim for 5.2.2 with hopefully only stability improvements.

Greetings,
Frederik

________________________________________
From: development-bounces+frederik.gladhorn=digia.com at qt-project.org [development-bounces+frederik.gladhorn=digia.com at qt-project.org] on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo [dangelog at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2014 4:19 PM
To: jlayt at kde.org
Cc: development at qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Development] Bug fixes to Stable or Dev branch?

On 5 February 2014 15:55, John Layt <jlayt at kde.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've seeing contradictory advice on Gerrit as to which branch to push bug-
> fixes to, some say there will be no 5.2.2 so to use dev instead, others say to
> keep using stable in case there is.  What is the current "official" policy?
>
> Oh, and please remember when making such decisions to clearly communicate them
> to this list, not everyone is in the office or on IRC.

The policy didn't change, see "Where to push a change?"

http://qt-project.org/wiki/Branch-Guidelines

It doesn't matter that 5.2.2 is not planned. If the change qualifies
for stable, push it to stable.

--
Giuseppe D'Angelo
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