What a thread, but a good one. I'm going to rewind to the very first email Josh sent. At Community over Code, I joking(not joking) had a slide that said "Somebody in 2035 will ask for a feature to be backported to 3.x" I want to make sure I got what you were proposing Josh, because the conversation has been sub-threading.
1. Create a branch designated explicitly as a backport. You were calling it 5.1, but it could easily exist in 4.x 2. Somebody wants to backport a feature, instead of doing it on $INTERNAL_FORK, propose it on the ML, +1s and then the backport work is for the benefit of everyone in the Cassandra community. Everything else seems like bikeshedding, but I could be wrong. Please correct me. Patrick On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 12:57 PM Dinesh Joshi <[email protected]> wrote: > The title of this thread is “[DISCUSS] Pilot program of an officially > supported backport branch” > > I want to draw attention to the word _official_. There is nothing > unofficial about what is being discussed here. I am not sure why is that > word being thrown around in the thread. > > To the PMCs and Committers on this project in this thread - we are talking > about our project’s governance and the OFFICIAL policy around backports. I > hope this clarifies what the goal of this thread and discussion is. > > There was a prior mentions about this being a branch where backported code > would live and will be untested. Let me clarify that we’re not talking > about just a branch. The project will create artifacts and release them. > Having code living in a repository without being released runs counter to > ASF’s principles. > > Thanks, > > Dinesh > > On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 12:41 PM Caleb Rackliffe <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> This sort of has to be about something we’ll do officially as a project, >> or the original post is little more than asking what we think about a >> public fork, which (as bad as it would look for the project) nobody really >> needs approval to do anyway, right? >> >> On Oct 13, 2025, at 2:28 PM, Alex Petrov <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> >> Thank you for the pointer but I did read it. >> >> My point is that this thread seems to have gone from “let’s create a >> branch to electively pull changes into” to “we are retrospectively adding a >> 5.1 branch somewhere between 5.0 and current trunk”, which I think is a >> completely different discussion. >> >> On Mon, Oct 13, 2025, at 9:15 PM, Štefan Miklošovič wrote: >> >> I am afraid something like an "enthusiast-driven branch" is not a >> thing. Please read the last email of Jeff, first section. >> >> On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 9:12 PM Alex Petrov <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> > > 4.0 -> 4.1 -> 5.0 -> 5.1 -> trunk >> > >> > Could you elaborate: I was under impression the new branch is going to >> be maintained by a group of enthusiasts. Are we now considering making this >> new branch in the upgrade path? This sounds rather different from the >> original idea of having an officially supported back port branch. >> > >> > On Mon, Oct 13, 2025, at 8:13 PM, Štefan Miklošovič wrote: >> > >> > What about this: do a proper 5.1 branch with everything (pipelines, >> release ...) but put there only Java 21 support and CEP-37? >> > >> > Release-wise, the appetite is there (Josh, Bernardo). We would keep 5.0 >> intact, 5.1 would be a branch we try this new model in, learn the lessons >> from it. When we support Java 21 and CEP-37 as only two changes and nothing >> else, it will already address Java 21 / unsupported Java 17 concerns and it >> would bring a lot of relief to people trying to transition to 6.0 >> eventually and they would have some time to prepare for that. Then, in 6.0, >> TCM / Accord would be production ready waiting for them to migrate to, >> while they would already be on Java 21 + repairs. >> > >> > So for a while we would have >> > >> > 4.0 -> 4.1 -> 5.0 -> 5.1 -> trunk >> > >> > Then 6.0 is out, by then, we will deprecate 4.x, right? So it would be >> > >> > 5.0 -> 5.1 -> 6.0 -> trunk >> > >> > Then we can do 6.1 branch and we will have some experience of what >> worked / did not and we will be more ready to backport more or we will just >> abandon this altogether. >> > >> > My idea is to just do something quick yet already beneficial. If we >> backport only Java 21 and CEP-37 then upgrade paths will be pretty smooth, >> nothing new will be there to cause any friction. >> > >> > As 5.0 / 5.1 will diverge relatively very little, all patches from 5.0 >> -> 5.1 would be very easy, in majority of cases just clean merges up. >> > >> > The only overhead is CI but we have pre-ci too which we can leverage so >> ... >> > >> > I would be more open to this if we agreed that the scope of the >> backporting on this initial pilot will be limited to a minimum of features >> and nothing else. Then we can just reflect on what we did. >> > >> > On Mon, Oct 13, 2025 at 7:38 PM Jeff Jirsa <[email protected]> wrote: >> > >> > >> > >> > > On Oct 13, 2025, at 7:02 AM, Josh McKenzie <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> > > >> > > To respond to some of the other points and throw my perspective into >> the mix: >> > > >> > >> Release engineering for a branch is nearly a full-time job. >> > > While release management is a burden (and one we've had a hard time >> resourcing for years), I don't see it as being nearly a full-time job per >> branch. We also have contributors willing to step forward and take on this >> extra work and plenty of opportunity for automation on both release >> preparation and validation that would lower that burden further. >> > > >> > >> Unofficial branches will miss correctness and compatibility fixes >> unless their maintenance is made a burden for all committers. >> > > Both proposals (backport to 5.0, support a 5.1 that accepts backport) >> would be considered official during the pilot. Bugfixes that are 5.0 or >> older would have 1 more branch they needed to apply to and merge through. >> > > >> > >> > I see the word unofficial used too many times. There’s no such thing as >> unofficial. If it’s merged by committers and voted on for release by the >> PMC, it’s official. If it’s not, it doesn’t belong in the ASF repos. >> > >> > > >> > >> – Backports branches don’t solve the “some people run forks” problem. >> > > I see this a bit differently; it doesn't "solve" the problem (I don't >> personally see this as a problem to be solved fwiw), but it does bring >> those forks much closer to upstream and move engineering effort that would >> otherwise be on private forks into the public space benefiting everyone. >> > >> > I think you’ve seen at least a few reasons in this thread why the goal >> and proposal may not align. What one team considers ready and low risk, >> another team begs not to be included. I suspect if there was really, truly >> a shared understanding of “this is back port ready, low risk, ready to >> run”, we could just put it into the existing branches (with a “yes this is >> a feature, but it’s a feature we all trust” discussion)? >> > >> > >> >> >>
