[Releasing] [Development] Qt 4.8.1 open source release date approaching..

[Girish Ramakrishnan]

Hi Tuuka,

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Turunen Tuukka <Tuukka.Turunen at digia.com> wrote:
>
> On 9.3.2012 17.41, "Girish Ramakrishnan" <girish at forwardbias.in> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>2012/3/9 Salovaara Akseli <Akseli.Salovaara at digia.com>:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We are currently preparing & testing Qt 4.8.1 open source release for
>>>next
>>> week. Exact release date is still open, until all tests are passed.
>>>And, as
>>> discussed it is possible that critical problems are found, and then we
>>>need
>>> to take another try.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We are currently testing against sha1 that points to commit:
>>> 1e0021d8d9e374ae3959fcd4eac5d9e7238cbc54
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Can you create a branch instead?
>
> This was discussed earlier, and we were thinking about using a branch. It
> was decided that we will try without. The basic idea is that at any time
> the code should be good to use. Naturally it is not always so, thus we may
> need to take another try.
>
> We have nothing against using a branch, but it is not mandatory either. At
> least not for patch releases.
>

 First of all, if I want to ask someone to test 4.8.1, I need to pass
this ugly sha1 around. If we had a tag or a branch pushed remotely, we
solve that problem. "Please test 4.8.1 tag/branch", that's it.

Secondly, what if we find a showstopper? We commit this to origin/4.8.
What's the new sha1? Is it the new origin/4.8? That ends up dragging
*all* commits that happened in between. For example, there are already
2 commits that have happened after the above sha1. I would be worried
letting in *any* other commits on top of the above sha1 unless it's
super critical. So, what I would do is: 4.8.1 release branch +
cherry-pick showstoppers. This is why the branch needs to exist. Shane
even drew a nice diagram of the above. http://dpaste.de/Xt8Z9/.

It doesn't matter if we don't use 4.8.1 branch. Creating branches in
git is super cheap. It would take me 10 seconds max to create this. I
can gladly help with the creation of branches and any git related
stuff (girishr on #qt-labs)

Thanks,
Girish