Re: [Xen-devel] [DOCDAY] Maintenance Release Policy

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 2012-11-26 at 16:58 +0000, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >>> On 26.11.12 at 17:45, Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2012-11-26 at 16:37 +0000, Jan Beulich wrote:
> >> >>> On 26.11.12 at 16:58, Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > No new development happens in the X.Y-testing branches, instead
> >> > changesets are backported from xen-unstable. Where this is not possible
> >> > (perhaps unstable has moved on such that the patch cannot be applied or
> >> > the approach used in unstable is otherwise not valid for the stable
> >> > branch) then a specific fix can be created for the stable branch.
> >> > However it is a requirement that the issue will always be fixed in
> >> > unstable first (this is to avoid regressions on the next stable
> >> 
> >> Did you mean "major" here?
> > 
> > Where? Before "regressions"? I'd like to think we were striving to avoid
> > regressions of either sort ;-)
> 
> Oh, sorry, I thought it to be clear that I wanted "stable" replaced
> by "major" (because that's where a regression would occur with a
> fix that wasn't a backport). But as always, I should have made this
> explicit.

Got it, yes you are absolutely right.

I was a bit worried about "major" implying the X being bumped, not just
the Y. But we don't really distinguish these (cf the 4.0 bump being
nothing especially significant) so I think I worried needlessly.

> 
> >> > Changesets are nominated for inclusion in the stable branch by making a
> >> > request to the stable maintainer on xen-devel either by noting it as
> >> > such in the submission of the original patch to xen-unstable or by a
> >> > subsequent explicit email to xen-devel.
> >> 
> >> I think we should explicitly require the person expected to do the
> >> backport to be Cc-ed; I for myself don't get around to read _all_
> >> mails on xen-devel, and hence with a badly chosen subject it is not
> >> impossible (albeit also not likely) for me to miss such a request
> >> otherwise.
> > 
> > That makes sense to me. Should we add entries to MAINTAINERS to cover
> > stable trees as well?
> 
> Maybe specifically on the stable branches?

Yes, or both?

> > I also wondered if it might be useful to have a greppable string, like
> > Linux's "CC: stable@xxxxxxxxxx"? AIUI the Linux stable guys don't
> > actually use this as a mailing list, even though it technically does
> > exist as such, instead they use it as grep fodder for their tooling. We
> > could certainly setup stable@xxxxxxx, directed to a blackhole if
> > necessary.
> 
> Since we don't generally include Cc-s in commit messages, I don't
> think that would help much. But I'm not opposed to this either.

I guess we could always start.

I think its pretty likely that having switched to git folks are likely
to start making more use of this (IMHO very convenient) feature of git
format-patch/send-email anyway.

Ian.


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