On Oct 16, 2014, at 11:34 AM, Daan Hoogland <daan.hoogl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> H, > > I noticed a lot of commits on master and 4.5 without any links between > them. These could have all been committed on 4.5 and merged back into > master leaving a trail of prove that the same code is in both branches. > > It hurts to see this happen. we are at a brink where we can improve on our > way of working. Let's do so. I will do a test merge-back of 4.5 to master > to see how big the damage is​. > > -- > Daan Daan I am +1000 with you on this, we need to come together as a community and change these practices. I would like to make one clear proposal to move us forward (outside of this thread if I see that a few folks agree). Proposal: ---- All commits come through github PR, *even* for committers. We declare a moratorium period (agreed suspension of activity) during which direct commit to master is forbidden. Only the master RM is allowed to merge PR in master (we define a master RM). If direct commit to master is done, master RM reverts without warning. Same for 4.5 and 4.4. branches. ---- This is drastic and I am sure some folks will not like it, but here is my justification for such a measure: Our commit and release processes have so far been based on the idea that development happens on master and that a release branch is cut from master (unstable development branch). Then a different set of community members harden the release branch, QA and bring it to GA level. During that time development keeps on going in master. This is an OK process if we have the luxury of having a QA team and can cope with split personality of being developers and release managers. My point of view is that as a community we cannot afford such a split brain organization and our experience overt the last year proves my point (delayed release date, broken builds, features merged without warning…) We can avoid this by cutting a release branch from a stable one (from the start), then as you (Daan) have mentioned several times, fix bugs in the release branch and merge them back in the stable source of the release (be it master). Feature development need to be done outside master, period. Not only for non-committers but also for committers. And merge request need to be called. This will help review and avoid surprises. New git workflow were proposed and shutdown, mostly calling for better CI to solve quality issues. CI will not solve our quality issues alone. We need to better police ourselves. To avoid long discussions, I propose this simple but drastic measure. We move all our commits to github PR until 4.5 is out, this stands for committers and non-committers, direct commits (especially to master) would be reverted immediately. -sebastien
