[Releasing] [Development] Focusing bug fixes to 5.9 branch and patch releases during H1/17

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On 15 Feb 2017, at 11:11, Marc Mutz <marc.mutz at kdab.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday 15 February 2017 10:36:33 Sean Harmer wrote:
>> First of all, apologies for not being able to make the release meeting
>> yesterday. I was in a workshop all day.
>> 
>> For the record I think skipping 5.8.1 is a big mistake. I would much rather
>> delay 5.9 by a few weeks and have a 5.8.1 release out than skip it and try
>> for a quick 5.9.0.
> 
> Amen.
> 
> I would like to add that this decision, made behind closed doors, does not 
> match well with Qt-as-an-open-governance-project. In particular, it feels like 
> we OSS contributors are being held hostage here. If you close the 5.8 CI, 
> anything we can do, incl. following the dictate of TQC to focus on 5.9, will 
> hurt Qt users one way or another. Either we fragment Qt by releasing a 5.8.1 
> without TQC backing or we leave users hanging in the air for extended periods 
> of time without the ability for bugfixes. Both are unacceptable, IMHO.

There are a lot of potential bug fixes.  Skipping 5.8.1 might pull some users into upgrading to 5.9 sooner than they might otherwise, which is good from one side, but the ones who are afraid of new features and new regressions will resist.  So I think it’s a mistake because of those people… but I always think those people should be less afraid of new releases, too.  (Just try it… how bad can it be.  Soon enough you will know if there are regressions that affect you.  If so, get patches for them and apply them locally.  If there’s no patch, write one and contribute.  That helps everyone.)

Some Linux distros will pull in some newer patches for their custom 5.8.0 builds.

FWIW the discussion was on #qt-releases, not exactly behind closed doors.