[ovirt-devel] [vdsm][maintainership] proposal for a new stable branch policy

Hi all, Recently Milan, Petr and me discussed the state of ovirt.4.2, considering that release 4.2.2 is still pending and this prevents merging of patches in the sub-branch ovirt-4.2. We agreed we could improve the handling of the stable branch(es), in order to make the process smoother and more predictable. Currently, we avoid doing Z- branches (e.g. ovirt-4.2.2, ovirt-4.2.3...) as much as we can, to avoid the hassle of double-backporting patches to stable branch. However, if a release hits unexpected delay, this policy causes different hassles: the Y-branch (ovirt-4.2, ovirt-4.3) is effectively locked, so patches already queued and ready for next releases can't be merged and need to wait. The new proposed policy is the following: - we will keep working exactly as now until we hit a certain RC version. We choosed RC3, a rule of thumb made out of experience. - if RC3 is final, everyone's happy and things resume as usual - if RC3 is NOT final, we will branch out at RC3 -- from that moment on, patches for next version could be accepted on the Y-branch -- stabilization of the late Z version will continue on the Z-branch -- patches will be backported twice Example using made up numbers - We just released ovirt 4.3.1 - We are working on the ovirt-4.3 branch - The last tag is v4.30.10, from ovirt-4.3 branch - We accept patches for ovirt 4.3.2 on the ovirt-4.3 branch - We keep collecting patches, until we tag v4.30.11 (oVirt 4.3.2 RC 1). Tag is made from ovirt-4.3 branch. - Same for tags 4.30.12 - oVirt 4.3.2 RC 2 and 4.30.13 - oVirt 4.3.2 RC 3. Both tags are made from ovirt-4.3 branch. - Damn, RC3 is not final. We branch out ovirt-4.3.2 form branch ovirt-4.3 from the same commit pointed by tag 4.30.13 - Next tags (4.30.13.1) for ovirt 4.3.2 will be taken from the ovirt-4.3.2 branch I believe this approach will make predictable for everyone if and when the branch will be made, so when the patches could be merged and where. The only drawback I can see - and that I realized while writing the example - is the version number which can be awkward: v4.30.11 -> 4.3.2 RC1 v4.30.12 -> 4.3.2 RC2 v4.30.13 -> 4.3.2 RC3 v4.30.13.1 -> 4.3.2 RC4 ?!?! v4.30.13.5 -> 4.3.2 RC5 ?!?! Perhaps we should move to four versions digit? So we could have v4.30.11.0 -> 4.3.2 RC1 v4.30.11.1 -> 4.3.2 RC2 v4.30.11.2 -> 4.3.2 RC3 v4.30.11.3 -> 4.3.2 RC4 v4.30.11.4 -> 4.3.2 RC5 I don't see any real drawback in using 4-digit versions by default, besides a minor increase in complexity, which is balanced by more predictable and consistent versions. Plus, we already had 4-digit versions in Vdsm, so packaging should work just fine. Please share your thoughts, -- Francesco Romani Senior SW Eng., Virtualization R&D Red Hat IRC: fromani github: @fromanirh