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Re: [O] [DEV] New git workflow


From: Simon Thum
Subject: Re: [O] [DEV] New git workflow
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:35:43 +0100
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20120304 Thunderbird/10.0.1

Hi all,

as discussion started anyway, I'd like to mention that I see some problem with maint, that is, it only ever pertains to the latest release. It's hard to hotfix and release old versions in the proposed model.

Moreover, maint is bound quite tightly to master. maint seems like a somewhat safer master to me - I fail to see a big difference between them. One may want to count that as a bonus; I don't. Part of the reason is that sometimes releases have commits that simply don't belong into master, like specific version increments.

Many projects use the IMO more sane model of release branches (or maintenance branches, if you prefer) for major releases. Minor ones are tagged on those branches, and back-porting critical fixes is much cleaner: Fixes and development go to master, fixes which should be back-ported are cherry-picked onto the release branches. When desired, a new release is tagged. Releases only come from release branches, of course.

If you like to see an example, the X server uses such a model:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/

I guess a decision should mostly be based on how significant the use case "back-port fix" is to org-mode. The "safer master" role of maint could of course be retained in a stable branch which points to something like address@hidden month ago}.

Cheers,

Simon

On 03/20/2012 01:51 AM, Bastien wrote:
Hi all,

our current git workflow is pretty well summarised by Achim -- we have
two main branches, master and maint, and we (try to) follow these rules:

    If it's a bugfix for something broken in a release version, commit to
    maint and merge maint back into master.

    If implementing a new feature or fixing something not yet released,
    commit to master.

On top of that, some local development happens in dedicated branches.

The role of master is clear: it contains latest mature developments,
which are either (1) bugfixes merged from maint, (2) features merged
from dedicated branches or (3) features developed in master directly.

The role of maint is less clear: it is both a "hotfix" branch and a
release branch for bugfix releases.  The reason for this branch was
first that we need to keep a production-like version of Org in sync
with Emacs.

The main problem I see With this workflow is that releases are made
from two different branches: bugfix releases are made from maint and
major releases are made from master.  This doesn't look right to me.

So I suggest to use three branches with these rules:

- master: the main persistent branch.  This is were regular development
   goes.  This branch is merged back to the maint branch when we release
   a new major version.  No release happens directly from this branch.

- maint: the "production" persistent branch.  This branch is dedicated
   to the release process: when hot fixes are hot enough, we merge the
   hotfix branch to the maint branch and release a bugfix release.  When
   the master branch (where hot fixes are also merged to) is mature and
   well tested, we merge master into maint and release a major version.

- hotfix-7.XX.XX: the transient branch for hotfixes.  Severe bugs are
   fixed there first, then merged back to maint when this makes sense.
   The branch is created when we need it and deleted when we don't need
   it anymore.

This workflow looks clearer to me.  Here are the advantages I see:

1) *all releases happen on the same branch* (the maint branch): it is
    easier to keep this branch in sync with Emacs and we can also add
    git hooks to automate the release process.

2) the master branch *is* the development branch: yes, pretty unusual.
    At least as unusual as not having two mailing lists, one for users
    and one for devs.  But I want to stick to what makes this list a
    great place: regular users are invited to live on the bleeding edge
    and to contribute patches on the "development" branch, the one they
    will clone first.

So, what's next?

I will merge 7.8.06 into Emacs.

Nothing should be committed to maint anymore before the next release.

Important bug fixes for 7.8.06 all go to a new branch hotfix-7.8.06.

Usual development goes to master, from where we regularily merge the
hotfix branch.

We'll get rid of the hotfix branch when releasing 7.8.07 or 7.9.

...

Finally, two positive things from the mess I put and went through:
I learned more about git, and I experienced once again how patient
and helpful people can be on this list.  Thanks to all again!





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