Fixes in Git (first in stable, then merge to master)

[Martin Gräßlin]

On Saturday 23 July 2011 19:28:53 Ben Cooksley wrote:
> >> During the stable branch freeze before a minor version release (such as currently 
before
> > the 4.7 release), it isn't possible to commit bug fixes to stable first and then merge to 
master.
> > Only master can be committed to, so presumably we'll have to continue to commit to 
master
> > and cherry-pick later once the freeze ends. Either that or change the policy on freezes.
> > Seriously: is this technically enforced or is it believed that developers know about it?
> 
> Technically enforced: No
> 
> All developers should know about it, as they were sent a set of
> instructions from sysadmin when they gained access to KDE SCM servers.
> A copy of it can be found at
> http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/kde-common/svn/svn_git_instructions.txt?view=markup
> 
> It contains a link to
> http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/SVN_Commit_Policy (which also applies
> to git i'll add)
> That has a section "Respect commit policies set by the Release Plans".
Please understand that what I pointed out is in no way any disrespect for the release team. I 
just want to point out that such community rules can easily be missed if not technically 
enforced and that such freezes are very fuzzy and maybe unknown. In comparison for 
feature freezes all KDE developers are notified through the cvs mailinglist.
> 
> > Personally I have no idea when the stable branch will be tagged or released. I commit to 
the
> > stable branch in order to fix a bug and in the hope that it will some day end on the users'
> > systems. But I do not care when this will happen and I never was blocked because of 
some
> > tagging freeze.
> >
> 
> We have Release Plans published on the wiki, and available as an ics
> file on www.kde.org which matches that for use in Kontact, etc.
The release plan states for final tagging:
"The branch is frozen for final release tagging. Only urgent fixes, such as those fixing 
compilation errors, should be committed."

Given that all deadlines are due 23:59 UTC I understand that I can commit all the day and that 
the tagging appears directly at 00:00 UTC which will immediatelly unfreeze the branch for 
fixes to 4.7.1. That is exaggerated, but points out a problem: there is no unfreeze date 
specified. Given that Dirk does not tag immediatelly, it is for a developer completely 
imprecticale to know when it is allowed again to commit. Without technical enforcement such 
freezes just cannot work.

For minor releases there is no freeze at all:
"A KDE minor release is tagged and made available to the packagers."

Cheers
Martin
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