Dear all,
In the past we were able to release patches to the IDE. I'm sure that in
the future we shall be able to release patches for 12.0 LTS as well.
I would like to start a discussion here on patches as it already started
at https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2156
So far I have the following questions to be discussed (feel free to extend):
1. How we prepare the source code of for the patch release in git?
2. How we prepare the source code of for the patch release?
Just to remember we are releasing source code officially, not
binaries. So what shall be the content, signatures, etc?
3. How shall we handle the module versions?
4. How shall we distribute the binaries?
5. How shall we handle the Maven artifacts?
As of me I see these as:
1. PR-s shall be marked "Cherry pick" for the patch release. The RM for
the patch release shall merge these patches to the release branch.
The RM shall make sure that, along these patches, the affected
module versions get properly adjusted.
2. As of the source code release, I'd do create a zip file containing
the changed files between the previous (patch) release and the
current release (I boldly assume that there wouldn't be file
deletion in a patch release). That would be the content of the
release, and that would be the artifact to be voted on.
3. As far as I remember, with the ordinary release modules get their
version as <major>.<minor>.1, increasing third number would just do.
4. We shall distribute the changed modules through the release update
center. I do not know if it worth the hassle to build installers
from the patch.
5. I must confess, that I'm not into the Maven artifact business of
NetBeans, so I might sound silly here. The creation of a BOM for
RELEASE120-1 shall be possible even if that would be a hand crafted
one from RELEASE120 generated BOM. Also that might be not even
needed as whoever builds on RELEASE120 have the option to use a
specific version of a module anyway, so I'd leave the responsibility
for updating maven based NetBeans Platform applications in the hand
of their maintainer. This also means that we would only upload
modules that changed to Maven Central.
