Hello, What is the current thinking around branch-2 releases? It seems branch-1 is doing away with "a branch per minor release" strategy. I'm curious if we should be doing the same on branch-2. To summarize the argument for, as I see it,
The pros: - consistent model for both active release lines. - encourages more rapid release of new features and the minor releases that cary them. - reduces developer overhead managing back ports. The cons: - difficult to "stabilize" a minor release line. - complex "timing" issues when back-porting new features from master. - more painful to produce patch releases. What other bullets did I miss? I am personally in favor of this approach. I think it provides two major benefits: increase the velocity of feature releases and raise the quality bar on commits. My counter-arguments to the cons are: > difficult to "stabilize" a minor release line I argue that this is a process issue, and should be addressed before patches land. We -- the community -- need to help contributors to validate their changes while they are in the PR process and sit on feature branches, before the arrive on the release branch. I argue this should happen before they hit master as well, but it seems that branch has some tech debit that needs addressed first. > complex "timing" issues when back-porting new features from master. We already have this, today, when committers coordinate with a release manager before merging their patches. > more painful to produce patch releases. Okay, I don't think this becomes *that* painful, but there is increased friction. If the community decides the development branch isn't ready for a release, it becomes the responsibility of the release manager to create a temporary branch, cherry-pick back any changes that are necessary, tag, and go. Once the release tag lands, the temporary branch is discarded. In practice, I think it's not terribly common for new features (that warrant increasing the minor version number) to come along back-to-back in close succession, such that they cannot be timed into the same minor release. Other concerns? Thanks, Nick
