Nathan, I think this is a great idea. My only comment is that we need to have a clear and easy way to request creation of a branch to work on.
What is the minimum that developers need to get a branch created in gerrit? Do they just email a request with a list of the work they are expecting to do and a branch name? Or do we want a little more? In general I feel we should be really liberal with the creation of branches. Since creating branches are cheap in git. If a developer is working on a task and they think it may require multiple commits or require sizable QA time a branch can be created. George From: iotivity-dev@lists.iotivity.org [mailto:iotivity-dev@lists.iotivity.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Heldt-Sheller Sent: Wednesday, September 5, 2018 6:04 PM To: iotivity-dev@lists.iotivity.org Subject: [dev] 2.1.0 release: suggestion for new branching plan Hi IoTivity Devs, In the past, we've had a relatively unstable master branch, which has caused us to stick to release branches perhaps longer than we'd like, to avoid battling a constant stream of regressions. These long-lived branches entail more work cherry picking release branch changes into master, tracking status on two separate branches for longer, etc. Comarch has recently finished installing a nightly regression test using the OCF Certification Test Tool, and will be running it against master every night going forward. We'll get an email within 24 hours if an OCTT regression is introduced. I'm very happy about this :) This - along with existing Jenkins tests - should keep new regressions to a minimum. This in turn means I think we can shorten the lifecycle for our release branches. For the next release ("Bangkok Point Release", a.k.a. 2.1.0) I'd like to try a much shorter release branch plan. We'd move all development to master until we basically are code complete (and passing OCTT by virtue of the nightly regression test). At that point we'd create a 2.1-rel branch, create a 2.1.0-RC0 tag, and run through QA process. The only patches against 2.1-rel would be to fix bugs found in this final QA cycle (which again hopefully will be minimal thanks to our nightly test cycles). As soon as the QA cycle finishes we'd make the 2.1.0 tag, cherry pick the 2.1-rel branch back to master, and resume working on master. The goal would be to have active development on the 2.1-rel branch last less than a month (as compared to multi-month lifespan of previous release branches). I think one effect of this is that large changes, such as a re-architecture or major new feature, should be developed on a separate branch rather than on master, so that master doesn't contain merged patches that form incomplete changes. I personally think this is good development practice anyway, but it's not the way IoTivity master has been treated previously. Are there any objections to this plan? Comments or suggestions to make it better? I'd like to agree on this formally at next week's OSWG weekly CC (Weds 9am PST, see OCF Kavi website if you'd like to attend), so that we can EOL the 1.4-rel branch and get everyone back on master asap. Thanks, Nathan -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#9925): https://lists.iotivity.org/g/iotivity-dev/message/9925 Mute This Topic: https://lists.iotivity.org/mt/25216172/21656 Group Owner: iotivity-dev+ow...@lists.iotivity.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.iotivity.org/g/iotivity-dev/unsub [arch...@mail-archive.com] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
