[Development] Qt branches & proposal how to continue with those

Giuseppe D'Angelo giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com
Mon Jan 29 10:31:14 CET 2018


On 29/01/18 07:59, Jani Heikkinen wrote:
> We have currently really many branches open:
> - 5.6
> - 5.9
> - 5.10
> - 5.10.1
> - 5.11
> - dev
> 
> In my opinion this is too much to handle effectively, especially because there is many branches in stable mode (see http://code.qt.io/cgit/meta/quips.git/tree/quip-0005.rst). Currently '5.6' is in 'strict' mode and  '5.9', 5.10' & '5.11' are in stable... I think we need to change that to be able to work efficiently & get releases out. 

Could you please elaborate, what's the problem at the moment when you
say that it's "too much" to handle? Is it a matter that branches have
become different enough that merges don't apply any longer? Is it a
matter of bandwidth for the releasing team having to produce releases
from several branches?

> 
> So I am proposing following changes starting from 1st Feb 2018:
> 
> - '5.6' will move in 'very strict' mode 

Which by the way is already the case, in practice. E.g. there have been
~20-30 patches landing in qtbase/5.6, with over half being fixes for
flaky autotests.

> - '5.9' will move in 'strict' mode. So no direct submissions anymore, just cherry picks from stable

This was also proposed a few days ago (to change in 'strict' mode after
5.11 branching is completed). I have mixed feelings about that, in the
sense that in 6 months from now noone will be doing the cherry-picks
because of the extra work, thus leaving bugs in 5.9 in the name of
stability, but somehow breaks the LTS promise.

> - '5.10' will be closed and Qt 5.10.1 will be the final release from Qt 5.10 series (5.6 and 5.9 are LTS branches so we shouldn't keep Qt 5.10 active too long)

I don't agree, 5.10 releases should be done on a regular basis until
5.11.1 is out (Yes, .1, many users don't upgrade to .0 versions...)

My 2 cents,
-- 
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dangelo at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (UK) Ltd., a KDAB Group company | Tel: UK +44-1625-809908
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts

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