[Development] Focusing bug fixes to 5.9 branch and patch releases during H1/17

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

With Qt 5.9 beta released last week, I think we should close 5.8 branch now. 

Closing 5.8 will help getting Qt 5.9 out in time by pushing everything directly into 5.9 branch. This is already the case for most items, but some items are still pushed to 5.8 branch causing the need for continuous merges and delaying getting those fixes to 5.9. Running the merges and submodule updates also causes load to the CI, which is away from doing more frequent runs on 5.9 and dev.

There has been a lot of discussion about this in the mailing lists, I think the two ones below sum it up quite well.

Yours,

	Tuukka



On 13/03/2017, 13.33, "Development on behalf of Oswald Buddenhagen" <development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=qt.io at qt-project.org on behalf of oswald.buddenhagen at qt.io> wrote:

    On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 01:38:47PM +0100, Marc Mutz wrote:
    > On Wednesday 01 March 2017 13:13:17 Lars Knoll wrote:
    > > > Let’s conclude this topic now by moving on towards 5.9 as Tuukka
    > > > proposed. After some thinking I also agree that this is the best
    > > > course of action from where we are right now.
    > > 
    > > This also implies that bug fixes should now get pushed to the 5.9
    > > branch and we should close the 5.8 branch soon.
    > 
    > I disagree. Even if you cannot produce releases from 5.8 anymore,
    > that's our stable branch.
    >
    that may be the case, but doesn't necessarily mean that you need to
    upstream your fixes there. closing it only affects other users of the
    5.8 tip who want your fixes. probably not that many.
    
    otoh, the branch being open costs CI cycles and causes some forward
    merging effort, while benefitting a marginal number of people.
    
    another point is that most tqtc employees are actually following the
    management order and are neglecting 5.8 (for two months now), which
    means that it's by far not as stable as one would want it to be.
    
    so i guess it's time to give in and officially close the branch.
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On 01/03/2017, 21.58, "Development on behalf of Thiago Macieira" <development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=qt.io at qt-project.org on behalf of thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:

    Em quarta-feira, 1 de março de 2017, às 04:38:47 PST, Marc Mutz escreveu:
    > > This also implies that bug fixes should now get pushed to the 5.9 branch
    > > and we should close the 5.8 branch soon.
    > 
    > I disagree. Even if you cannot produce releases from 5.8 anymore, that's our
    > stable branch. 5.9 isn't stable, yet. If you release 5.9.0, *then* you can
    > close 5.8. Do you really want stuff from 5.9 cherry-picked to 5.6?
    
    We usually switch the default branch between the beta and the RC, so the point 
    is moot.
    
    5.9 will be considered stable in a couple of weeks, so 5.8 can be closed.
    
    -- 
    Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
      Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
    
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