Re: [Vote] Re-open staging for contributions at RC3

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2768 bytes --]

On 02/09/15 17:12, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I wanted to kick off a vote related to the following threads
> * http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2015-08/msg00883.html - [URGENT
> RFC] Branching and reopening -unstable
> * http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2015-08/msg00543.html - [xen
> 4.6 retrospective] [urgent] rename "freeze" window and make release
> branch as soon as possible after RC1
>
> Although there was no consensus in the general case to say we should
> always branch at RC-x at any given release, there seems to be enough
> consensus for branching earlier, given a number of conditions are met:
>
> In particular:
> 1: We should not re-open staging too early (aka we would need to get a
> sense how much churn to expect)
> 2: Maybe we should not accept major re-factoring and leave it up to
> the discretion of thy maintainers to do so - aka Ian Jackson's option
> B. But there seems to be some disagreement around it. 
>
> 2.1: Some maintainers are concerned that they would have to deal with
> backporting, if we re-opened early.
>
> 2.2: A sensible compromise seems to me for the maintainer to evaluate
> whether a patch is ready to go in after RC3: if there is an amount of
> back porting that the maintainer can't deal with, it is IMHO OK for
> the maintainer to let the contributor know and give him/her the option
> to provide a patch for two trees as it is customary in Linux OR to
> wait until the ongoing release is out. This is a slight variant of Ian
> Jackson's option B
> in http://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2015-08/msg00883.html 
>
> Of course, 1 will minimise the amount of incidents for 2
>
> = VOTE =  
> With that in mind: please vote on
> A) Do we think 4.6 is in a good enough state to branch at the next RC
> (which would be RC3)
>
> B) Do we have enough consensus given that there is some disagreement
> on how to deal with back-porting. In other words, does the proposal
> 2.2 above look sensible.

My initial objections to branching early have been mitigated now, as it
turns out that the churn during the RCs is minimal, and the base quality
is substantially better than it has been in the past.

I don't forsee much else going in before the release, and there are no
huge blocker bugs needing working on (of which I am aware).

Therefore, I think it is now reasonable for work to start on -staging
again.  I don't forsee much more going into 4.6 before release. 
However, to avoid an invocation of sods law, some care should still be
taken.

Therefore, I think it is ok to branch and re-open rc3, but still use
maintainer prudence on more complicated series until a final rc has been
chosen, to reduce the risk of some awkward backports needing to happen.

~Andrew

[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 4763 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 126 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel