On 07/08/2013 03:12 PM, Marek Olšák wrote:
On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Ian Romanick <i...@freedesktop.org> wrote:
3. I'd like to make some adjustments to our process for picking patches back
to the stable branch. The current process is okay, but it has some kinks.
The two big (related) problems are people either under-mark things for the
stable branch or over-mark. We also have the problem that things are
occasionally marked for stable that, in the end, shouldn't go to stable.
Instead of the current system, I'd like to propose creating a mesa-stable
mailing list where candidate patches will be sent. The release manage will
then have the responsibility to apply patches to the branch. This gives
opportunity for subsystem maintainers to ACK or NAK patches before they
land. It also gives the opportunity to use a build bot to pre-verify that
no patch ever breaks the build on the stable branch.
Anyone can nominate a patch for stable by sending it to the list. This
provides a means for solving the under-mark problem. It may mean that
developers have to do more work (e.g., waiting awhile after a patch lands on
master to send it to the stable list), so we may need to come up with some
means to mitigate that.
As part of this, we need to clearly document the criteria for inclusion in
the stable branch. We have some vague criteria now, but we should formalize
and agree on the list.
I don't like the idea that *we* have to send patches to the stable
mailing list. The marking of candidates for stable has pretty much
been the same as in the Linux kernel and worked pretty well. From
kernel/Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt:
Yeah, I wasn't terribly in love with that part either. Having to
remember to send a patch out again seemed prone to loss.
"To have the patch automatically included in the stable tree, add the tag
Cc: sta...@vger.kernel.org
in the sign-off area. Once the patch is merged it will be applied to
the stable tree without anything else needing to be done by the author
or subsystem maintainer."
The major difference between the current Mesa and kernel approaches
seems to be that there is a -stable maintainer for kernel who decides
which candidates go in and which don't. I think we need such a strict
maintainer for our stable branches, but I don't think we need anything
else.
Carl has agreed to be the maintainer at least for the time being.
Having a separate list would make it easier for him to sort candidate
patches from non-candidate patches because would keep marked-at-commit
patches and marked-after-commit patches in one places.
Could we just change our "Mark the patch with 'NOTE: ...'" policy with
"To have the patch automatically included in the stable tree, add the tag
Cc: mesa-sta...@lists.freedesktop.org
in the sign-off area..." ?
I also think the under-mark problem is unsolvable no matter what the
process of picking patches is. People must either:
- mark their patches for stable
- go through the git log, find suitable candidates, and make sure they
are all picked (I have done this with my patches too), this is the
only case where a stable mailing list makes sense
I also recommend reading stable_kernel_rules.txt as mentioned by
Daniel Vetter, but he linked to an old version. The latest version can
be found in the kernel tree.
Marek
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