Re: [Qemu-devel] Qemu stable releases

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 02:08:03PM -0600, Justin M. Forbes wrote:
> The stable tree for 1.0 has now been created and the mailing list
> exists. I am curious as to people's thoughts on how we should proceed.
> There was discussion of setting up a predictable time table for stable
> releases, say monthly or bimonthly, though that seems a bit difficult
> from past experience.  Typically I get a flurry of patches shortly after
> a release (and they have already started for 1.0).  I have tried to get
> a .1 release out in a timely manner, and then it seems patches for
> stable become few and far between.  In the 0.14 and 0.15 series, not
> even enough to warrant a .2 release.  Perhaps this is due to lack fixed
> issues, or lack of effort to submit to stable.  What I would like to
> recommend is the following:
> 
> 1) On the 15th of every month, the stable queue will be evaluated for
> release.
> 2) If enough patches exist (or critical enough patches exist), a stable
> release will be cut as soon as testing/push/mirror can be done.  If
> there are no patches, or not enough patches to warrant a release, they
> will be held over until the next release.
> 3) Security fixes do not follow this schedule, and will trigger a stable
> release as needed.
> 
> Questions, comments, concernes? How do people feel about this?

Is there a policy for what commits count as stable?

FWIW in libguestfs we have such a policy.  Every few weeks I evaluate
_all_ commits along the development branch and cherry pick those that
meet this policy back to the stable branch, followed by making a new
stable release.  Here is the policy:

http://libguestfs.org/guestfs.3.html#libguestfs_version_numbers
  from "Our criteria for backporting changes are ..."

This is easy and has worked out well for us.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
New in Fedora 11: Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows
programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 70 libraries supprt'd
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW http://www.annexia.org/fedora_mingw