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

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

We have discussed this already multiple times and it is well known by everyone. Closing of the branch has been clearly decided, only item open has been the time. Now that we have 5.9 beta released, I think it clearly is the time to close 5.8 and fully focus into making Qt 5.9 good. The sooner we get 5.9.0 out, the sooner we can also get 5.9.1 out. And note that 5.9.0 contains every fix that would have been part of 5.8.1 and more – a lot more. 

No-one is happy about skipping patch releases for 5.8. This is a trade off done in order to get better Qt releases in the future. Keeping 5.8 branch open and pushing fixes there instead of 5.9 results in worse 5.9 than we could have by focusing to it. Every single merge from 5.8 to 5.9 is time away from people to work on 5.9 (and dev), from machines to be able to work on 5.9 (and dev), and from calendar time of having fixes on the hands of most of the users (i.e. getting them into a release of Qt or pre-releases of Qt).

Yours,

	Tuukka

On 11/04/2017, 14.17, "Development on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo" <development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=qt.io at qt-project.org on behalf of giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com> wrote:

    Il 11/04/2017 12:46, Aleix Pol ha scritto:
    > What's the point of keeping 5.8 open if there's not going to be
    > another 5.8 release?
    
    Because of customer projects, Linux distributions, etc. that are
    currently on 5.8, and that want to benefit from the latest bug fixes and
    performance improvements without waiting 4-5 months for 5.9.1.
    
    Yes, they *will* skip any .0 release, and convincing customers to
    upgrade to a new minor release is definitely more complicated than
    convincing to upgrade to a new patch release (... which in this case
    translates to tracking the 5.8 branch).
    
    Cheers,
    -- 
    Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
    KDAB (UK) Ltd., a KDAB Group company | Tel: UK +44-1625-809908
    KDAB - Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts