Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>]

Hi everyone,

as the process of how to get fixes into stable(-rc) grimoire apparently
isn't clear to everyone, here's how I think the process should be.
This is mostly a draft to get comments, but we definitely need some
policy like this to ensure stable is as stable as we can get it.
This isn't really anything new, just a clarification of how the process
is supposed to work, extending it to security updates.

- a new flag "integrate to stable-rc" will get added to bugzilla
- bugs get filed against the highest grimoire in the stability range
  that they apply to, i.e. first to stable, then stable-rc, then test
- bugs get fixed _only_ in test grimoire as usual
- once they're fixed in test, the "fixed in lesser branch" flag is set
  to "+", and the "integrate to $BRANCH" flags are set to "?" for the
  branches they apply to
- one of the gatekeepers (currently Eric Sandall, Seth Woolley and
  myself) approves or denies the request(s) for integration, if it's
  denied, an explanation of the reasons is added to the bug 
- once the request is approved (flag set to "+"), it can be integrated
  to the branch for which it was approved, currently that integration
  can be done by anyone with access to those grimoires

I want the same process to be followed for security updates.
If a guru does some fixes without a bug report and wants those
integrated to stable-rc/stable, a new bug report should be filed for
that, stating the reasons for the request.

Yes, this does slow down getting bugfixes into stable-rc and stable, but
that's not a bad thing. We're working hard on getting stable to a really
stable state (and prometheus showed we still have quite a bit of work
ahead of us), so we should be really confident that no integration to
stable breaks stuff that previously worked. It's just a matter of
getting another pair of eyes to screen the changes right now, we'll
probably want to add some prometheus testing to that process in the
future though.

Any comments are welcome.

-- 
Arwed v. Merkatz                              Source Mage GNU/Linux developer
                                                    http://www.sourcemage.org