Hi folks, - I think master should be stable. - I think gem5 should be released three times per year.
Kind Regards, George Bousdras PhD Researcher — Embedded Systems BEAMS - Bio Electro and Mechanical Systems www.ulb.ac.be beams.ulb.ac.be On 16/12/2019, 20:50, "gem5-users on behalf of Jason Lowe-Power" <[email protected] on behalf of [email protected]> wrote: Hi all, As many of you have seen on gem5-dev, we are going to be adding a "stable" version of gem5. Below is the current proposal. There are a couple of points below where there has not been general consensus reached. We would appreciate feedback *from everyone in the community* on the points where a decision hasn't been made below. gem5 is a community-driven project, and we need feedback to make sure we're making community-focused decisions. We will be introducing a new "stable" branch type to gem5. We are doing this for the following reasons: - Provide a way for developers to communicate major changes to the code. We will be providing detailed release notes for each stable release. - Increase our test coverage. At each stable release, we will test a large number of "common" benchmarks and configurations and publicize the current state of gem5. - Provide a way for researchers to communicate to the rest of the community information about their simulation infrastructure (e.g., in a paper you can say which version of gem5 you used). On the stable version of gem5, we will provide bugfixes until the next release, but we will not make any API changes or add new features. We would like your feedback on the following two questions: **Which branch should be default?** We can either have the master branch in git be the "stable" or the "development" branch. If master is the stable branch, then it's easier for users to get the most recent stable branch. If master is the development branch, it's more familiar and easier for most developers. Either way, we will be updating all of the documentation to make it clear. Please let us know which you prefer by replying "I think master should be stable" or "I think master should be development". **How often should we create a new gem5 release?** We can have a gem5 release once per year (likely in April) or three times per year (April, August, and December). Once per year means that if you use the stable branch you will get updates less frequently. Three times per year will mean there are more releases to choose from (but a newer release should always be better). On the development side, I don't think one will be more work than the other. Once per year means more backporting, and three times per year means more testing and time spent on releases. Please let us know which you prefer by replying "I think gem5 should be released once per year" or "I think gem5 should be released three times per year." A couple of notes to everyone who's been following the discussion on the gem5-dev mailing list: - We have dropped the proposal for major vs minor releases. Note that there was some pushback on having only major releases when this was proposed on the gem5 roadmap, but it sounded like the consensus was to drop minor releases for now. - We will still allow feature branches *in rare circumstances*. This will be by request only (send mail to gem5-dev if you would like to discuss adding a new branch), and the goal will be integration within a few months. All code review will still happen in the open on gerrit. The benefits will be 1) rebases won't be required as you can just make changes to the head of the branch 2) many features take more than a few months to implement, so if it's not ready by a release it can be pushed to the next 3) large changes won't be hidden in AMD or Arm-specific repositories and *anyone* will be able to request a branch. Thanks everyone for the discussions so far! It would be most useful to hear back by the end of the week. However, I don't expect any concrete actions will be taken until after the holidays. Cheers, Jason _______________________________________________ gem5-users mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gem5-users _______________________________________________ gem5-users mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gem5-users
