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

[Marc Mutz]

On Tuesday 11 April 2017 11:08:49 Liang Qi wrote:
> On 11 April 2017 at 09:30, Marc Mutz <marc.mutz at kdab.com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 11 April 2017 07:49:28 Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> > > There has been a lot of discussion about this in the mailing lists, I
> > 
> > think
> > 
> > > the two ones below sum it up quite well.
> > 
> > ......
> > 
> > You can close 5.8 on all other modules, if you wish, but I'd ask to keep
> > it open on QtBase, which has a lively development going on in 5.8 to
> > this day.
> 
>  Any new change in qtbase means need a new round of qt5.git integration and
> rebuild all other modules, because they depend on qtbase.

No, it doesn't (have to) mean that.

We usually do not change APIs in a stable branch. A stable branch is forwards 
and backwards compatible. If we close dependent modules and only keep QtBase 
open, it follows you cannot commit to dependent modules. In particular, you 
cannot adapt to changes in 5.8. Which means that we naturally restrict what 
changes can do into QtBase-5.8. Personally, I never had the need to change 
something in other modules when commiting something to QtBase-stable.

So dependent modules don't need to be rebuilt. They can either run against an 
updated qtbase binary, or use the old qtbase snapshot for much longer. 
Something like once a month or so in 5.8 should not load the CI too much. You 
can schedule it for CET nights. The CI is idle then, anyway.

Which brings me to the question: why is a new git5.git integration (for any 
branch) not attempted each night, automatically? Is the CI doing something 
else at that time? Shouldn't doing so increase the CI capacity by almost 50%, 
for free?

Thanks,
Marc

-- 
Marc Mutz <marc.mutz at kdab.com> | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (Deutschland) GmbH & Co.KG, a KDAB Group Company
Tel: +49-30-521325470
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