[Development] Proposal: Eliminate soft branching phase from release process

[Kari Oikarinen]

On 14.10.2019 16.40, Kari Oikarinen wrote:
> 
> 
> On 12.10.2019 14.14, Oswald Buddenhagen wrote:
>   > On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 12:04:20PM +0000, Kari Oikarinen wrote:
>   >
>   >> Currently there is a bit of uncertainty about when exactly the
>   >> downmerges happen,
>   >>
>   > yes, and that's entirely fine. the whole *point* of the process is to
>   > make it irrelevant when it happens. if you rely on the time of the
>   > downmerge but are not a release manager, you're doing it wrong.
> 
> It's not irrelevant! People who target the newly created branch should
> not wait until the last minute to retarget and thus the exact point in
> time does not matter to them.
> 
> But anyone who wants to *actually* target the old branch needs to wait
> for the downmerge to pass. In effect the week of soft branching means
> that the old branch is temporarily closed, because the changes staged
> to it actually go to the newly created branch. The problem is that to
> know whether that is the case you need to either read Jani's mails or
> check the history for the downmerge. (And even if you did check, are
> you sure it's final?)

After thinking about it again, I agree with you that it's irrelevant.
There could be a category of changes that would need to wait and I was
describing it.

But in fact there isn't, since the branching and the associated cut-off
has not happened yet during soft branching. So any changes that need to
happen before the cut-off can target the old branch. Either they make
the cut-off (are included in the downmerge) or they don't and are
included in the next release.

The period is in fact exactly the same as the week before hard branching
would be in my proposal.

-- 
Kari