Hi all
I'm a tad concerned about our ability to test proposed CMR's for the
1.3 branch. Given the long delays in getting 1.3 out, and the rapidly
looming 1.4 milestones that many of us have in our individual
projects, it is clear that the trunk is going to quickly diverge
significantly from what is in the 1.3 branch. In addition, we are
going to see quite a few commits occurring within a restricted time
period.
Thus, the fact that some proposed change does or does not pass MTT
tests on the trunk at some given point in time is no longer a reliable
indicator of its behavior in 1.3. Likewise, it will be difficult to
isolate that "this commit is okay" when MTT can really only tell us
the state of the aggregated code base.
Let me hasten to point out that this has been a recurring problem with
every major release. We have discussed the problem on several
occasions, but failed to reach consensus on a solution.
I would like to propose that we create a 1.3 staging branch. This
branch would be opened on an individual-at-a-time basis for them to
commit proposed CMR's for the 1.3 branch. We would ask that people
please include the staging branch in their MTT testing on occasions
when a change has been made. Once the proposed change has been
validated, then it can be brought over as a single (and easy) merge to
the 1.3 release branch.
I realize this may slow the passage of bug fixes somewhat, and
obviously we should apply this on a case-by-case basis (e.g., a simple
removal of an unused variable would hardly merit such a step).
However, I believe that something like the IOF patch that needs to
eventually move to 1.3, and the Windows upgrade, are examples that
probably do merit this step.
Just a suggestion - hope it helps.
Ralph
