[Releasing] [Development] HEADS-UP: Branching from '5.8' to '5.8.0' started

[Lars Knoll]

As long as we're still merging from 5.6 to 5.8, this is probably a good way to handle things. But since we're now having this on the table, I still believe that we need to consider when to stop doing merges from 5.6 to newer versions. 

This has been discussed in length at the contributor summit, and the continued merges place a rather large burden (and potential for errors) on a few people. It also tends to lead to more changes going into 5.6 than we strictly should have according to our policy. A mode where we at some point stop doing any merges from 5.6, and instead backport bug fixes into that branch will then help us distribute the 'merge' load and validation of the change in the older branch to all of us. 

Cheers,
Lars

On 22/11/16 15:24, "Development on behalf of Oswald Buddenhagen" <development-bounces+lars.knoll=qt.io at qt-project.org on behalf of oswald.buddenhagen at qt.io> wrote:

    On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 01:40:44PM +0100, Liang Qi wrote:
    > Then there will be batches of merges 5.6->5.7->5.8 before the final down
    > merge 5.8->5.8.0. If your changes are after those merges, it will miss the
    > 5.8.0 release normally.
    
    > (cherry-pick only for the critical things after the final down merge.)
    > 
    as this cherry-picking is kinda getting out of control, i propose the
    following upgrade to the branching process:
    
    - initial situation: 5.6.2 (previous lts release) is done and we want to
      release 5.8.0
    - right after the last forward merges 5.6=>5.7=>5.8 before finishing
      branching 5.8.0 (that is *now*), we already create 5.6.3
    - this appears obviously premature, as we just released 5.6.2, and the
      final downmerge from 5.6 to 5.6.3 is months away
    - however, this gives us a place to integrate all critical lts fixes
      which we can forward-merge to 5.8.0
    - weird twist: after 5.8.0 gets released and 5.6.3 is forward-merged to
      5.6, the branch can be temporarily closed again, until it is
      re-activated for the actual 5.6.3 release (or again temporarily for
      the 5.8.1 release)
    
    the 5.6.3 branch would be hard-branched right away and owned by RM (i.e,
    staging is restricted).
    developers need to decide between 5.6 and 5.6.3 based on whether they
    are targeting 5.8 or 5.8.0 when merged up.
    
    > And I plan to do the merges during weekends, if CI/COIN works fine. Or if
    > you want your changes not missing this chance, please send some
    > notification to me, for example, reply this email to me(not all).
    > 
    > Best Regards,
    > Liang
    > 
    > 
    > On 21 November 2016 at 14:50, Jani Heikkinen <jani.heikkinen at qt.io> wrote:
    > 
    > > Hi,
    > > We have started branching from '5.8' to '5.8.0'. Please start using
    > > '5.8.0' for new changes targeted to Qt 5.8.0 release. There should be
    > > enough time to finalize ongoing changes in '5.8'; final downmerge will
    > > happen Monday 28th November.
    > >
    > > br,
    > > Jani
    > >
    > >
    > >
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