Git merge workflow: reverse it?

[Aleix Pol]

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 2:44 PM Bhushan Shah <bshah at mykolab.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> At plasma, we are experimenting with new workflow regarding how bugfixes
> are put on the stable branch [1].
>
> # Previous workflow
>
> - Current workflow is that we commit to stable branch and then merge it
>   upwords until master branch
> - i.e commit to Plasma/5.18 branch, merge 5.18 into 5.19 and then
>   master
>
> # Current workflow
>
> - Proposed workflow is to instead commit all changes in master, and
>   cherry-pick related changes in the stable branch as needed
> - We had been using this workflow for about 1 month now and I'd say it
>   is working nicely for us.
>
> # Why?
>
> We occasionally hit several issues with previous workflow,
>
> - Merge conflicts when merging changes upwords
> - Changes which are valid only for stable branch needs to be reverted in
>   master branches. So you end-up with, stable-fix, revert of stable fix
>   and then different fix and overall weird history.
> - Accidential merges from the master branch to stable branch which
>   needs to be force-resetted.
> - It's worth noting that Qt also recently changed to merge to dev,
>   cherry-pick backwards.
> - This also allows for workflows where we want to commit some bugfix in
>   the master branch for few days/weeks and if it works fine in general
>   testing then, cherry-pick it in stable branches.
>
> Proposal is to probably adapt this policy kde-wise if people feel that
> advantages are worth it.
>
> Thanks
>
> [1] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2020-June/117887.html

I was skeptical in the beginning about this, having used it in several
projects it's been quite pleasant and painless though.
+1

Aleix