Re: Plan for the 5.9 branch

[dana <dana@xxxxxxx>]

On 16 Feb 2020, at 05:15, Daniel Shahaf <d.s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> As to branching policy, in the future we should probably do things the
> other way around; that is: in the run-up to the 5.9 release next year,
> rather than stabilize on master and open a 5.10 branch for destabilizing
> changes, we should open a 5.9 branch for stabilization and leave master
> open to destabilizing changes.

I like this. When we reach 'feature freeze' for 5.9, we branch off, only
back-port important stuff from master, and then release 5.9 based on that
branch. If we find any regressions or security bugs, we can back-port those
fixes and release 5.9.1 or whatever.

Oliver pointed out before that nothing stops us from back-porting stuff and
releasing patch versions now, but i think the important thing is to have a
standardised process for it. It makes the releases go smoothly, and it helps
everyone make sense of the repo and the version history. And obv we'd document
the process somewhere for anyone who might get confused.

The main concern i've heard about it in the past is that maybe some of the
devs don't have the bandwidth for the extra work, but ideally the back-ports
would be infrequent, and presumably it'd fall on the RM to make sure nothing
falls through the cracks

dana