Git merge workflow: reverse it?

[Elvis Angelaccio]

On 29/07/20 14:01, Bhushan Shah wrote:
> Hello everyone!
Hi Bhushan
> 
> 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.
IMHO the workflow choice should be left to each project. I can see why
you may want to use it in Plasma, but for the apps I maintain it would
probably double the work for no practical gain.

I'd be ok with a global policy "if unsure always send a MR against
master" (newcomers already do that anyway), but then it should be up to
the maintainer to choose how to handle the MR.

> 
> Thanks
> 
> [1] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2020-June/117887.html
> 

Cheers,
Elvis