Next focus: PROCESS

[foobar]

On Sunday, 16 December 2012 at 15:05:58 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 12/16/12 6:15 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
>> On 12/15/2012 09:39 PM, deadalnix wrote:
>>> Can we drop the LTS name ? It reminds me of ubuntu, and I 
>>> clearly hope
>>> that
>>> people promoting that idea don't plan to reproduce ubuntu's 
>>> scheme :
>>> - it is not suitable for a programming language (as stated 3 
>>> time now,
>>> so just
>>> read before why I won't repeat it).
>>> - ubuntu is notoriously unstable.
>>
>> Call them "stable release cycles" if you like, which is what 
>> they are
>> intended to be.
>
> Just one tidbit of information: I talked to Walter and we want 
> to build into the process the ability to modify any particular 
> release. (One possibility is to do so as part of paid support 
> for large corporate users.) That means there needs to be one 
> branch per release.
>
> Andrei

I don't see why that is a requirement (having a branch per 
release).
We can still have a single stable branch with tags for releases 
and when Walter needs to provide special customizations he can 
always just branch off of the tagged release. This should be 
Walter's business and not part of the "official" community 
process.

in git terms, assuming we have a tagged release of 2.61
$ git checkout -b 2.61-partner 2.61
This branches off a new branch "2.61-partner" for the specific 
partner modification based off the contents of the "2.61" release.

Also, this kinda messes with the notion of integration. A single 
stable branch helps prevent "forgotten" bug-fixes. I.e a critical 
bug was fixed on release N, what will ensure it will be included 
in release N+1? If Release N+1 is on the same branch than the 
bug-fix is included by default and prevented the need to perform 
a manual operation (a merge) that could be forgotten.