Shawn pretty well nailed it. Especially this bit: "...unless you are also volunteering to be the release manager".
There'll be some push-back even if you're willing to be the RM if it's a big change, but that's a discussion for we'll have when there's a concrete proposal. Best, Erick On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 7:34 AM, Shawn Heisey <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/25/2015 3:24 AM, Ramkumar R. Aiyengar wrote: >> I know patches are generally for bug fixes, but given that it is the end >> of line branch for 4x, do we accommodate requests for back porting small >> features, or just ask them to patch it themselves? > > I would appreciate a sanity check from someone who has a longer history > with the project, but this is my understanding: > > If there is a critical or trivial bugfix, or a very useful usability > enhancement that can be considered an easy and safe change (a small > patch that doesn't affect API compatibility at all), then it might make > sense to backport, but unless you are also volunteering to be the > release manager, it may be quite a while before users actually see a > 4.10.x release with the change. > > As time passes and branch_5x diverges further from the 4.10 branch > (which is now considered to be in maintenance mode), it will become > increasingly difficult to backport. In some ways, this means that 4x > will be effectively dead as soon as we have a battle-tested 5.x version > that we are willing to recommend for even a conservative novice user. > > For the most part, unless the patch addresses a serious problem that > affects a lot of users, the user will need to patch the 4.x code themselves. > > This info should probably be in the wiki, if it is not already. I > didn't look. > > Thanks, > Shawn > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
