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

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

What Keven wrote below is absolutely true. Within the one million users of Qt we really have an extremely wide variety of different needs. 
 
Also in this discussion, there has been quite a versatile set of opinions stated, which is very good. There has been some suggestions to even not make patch releases at all for non-LTS releases (which is way more scarce on releases that Jani initially suggested). There has been some discussion about which is more important to have patch releases for: LTS or non-LTS versions. Luckily we are not in a situation where we would have to choose. Both are important and it is very natural that an LTS will receive more patch level releases than a non-LTS release.

Here is what Jani originally proposed (to happen starting from 1st Feb 2018):

- '5.6' will move in 'very strict' mode
- '5.9' will move in 'strict' mode. So no direct submissions anymore, just cherry picks from stable
- '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)
- '5.11' will be to one and only stable branch

The item that has received comments both in favor and against is what to do with 5.10 now. I think that instead of closing 5.10, we could move it to cherry pick mode, just like Qt 5.9 is. That allows putting the necessary fixes there, but reduces the amount of needed merges a lot. It also allows to faster get all the fixes merged up to dev, which is something we have struggled in the past.

With this approach we have full capability to make Qt 5.10.2 release, if one is needed. We also continue to make Qt 5.9.x patch releases. We would have two branches open for direct submission: 5.11 and dev, and for each commit the lowest applicable branch can be chosen. For all such important fixes that need to be in Qt 5.9.x LTS releases or in the 5.10 branch, we use cherry picking. 

Yours,

	Tuukka

On 30/01/2018, 12.27, "Development on behalf of Konrad Rosenbaum" <development-bounces+tuukka.turunen=qt.io at qt-project.org on behalf of konrad at silmor.de> wrote:

    On Tue, January 30, 2018 00:18, Kevin Kofler wrote:
    > I would on the contrary expect users to want new features sooner rather
    > than
    > later,
    [...]
    
    Please keep in mind that there are several classes of Qt users:
    
    Mobile: moving fast and furious. Depend on novelty.
    
    General Desktop: moving somewhat fast. Prefer novelty.
    
    Offices w/ IT admins: move much slower. Prefer stability over novelty.
    
    Industrial, regulated and embedded: move extremely slow. Depend on stability.
    
    I've been in projects that jumped ship every time someone invented a new
    buzz word and in projects where I had to compile my own GCC and X11
    libraries because no supported version of Qt would compile with the one(s)
    in the target OS.
    
    
    
         Konrad
    
    _______________________________________________
    Development mailing list
    Development at qt-project.org
    http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development