[llvm-dev] [Openmp-dev] [6.0.0 Release] Scheduling the release

[Chandler Carruth via llvm-dev]

FWIW, I don't have really strong objections, but I'm honestly not a fan.
The reason is mostly that I think it is very late to make the change and
likely to mean most people are on holiday when the branch occurs. I
somewhat anticipate significantly more cherrypicks as a consequence. I'd
love for Apple's releases to by sync'd with the open source ones, but I
don't understand why one week earlier is so critical. That said, I
generally defer to those who are working more heavily on the open source
releases.

The one thing I have a stronger opinion about is the idea of a "feature
freeze", stabilization period, or other change. I'm pretty strongly opposed
to this. One of the things that I most appreciate about the LLVM community
and process is that the top-of-tree is always open, always active, and
always kept green. Things that seem very likely to follow from trying to
change this process:

- People won't follow the guidelines because it would be a pretty huge
shift from prior workflows.
- We'll need some enforcement policy which will end up driving people to
use more branches and generally develop things less incrementally and with
less review.
- There will be the feeling that outside of these windows it is some how
less critical to keep top-of-tree "stable"

It also isn't clear what problem this idea is trying to solve. If the
release testers need the tree to start off closer to "ready", we should add
continuous testing of these areas and hold patches to that *always*, not
just right before a branch.

Anyways, my two cents....
-Chandler

PS: None of the above means we shouldn't minimize *disruption* right before
a branch to make things easier. Making things hard to cherry pick, or
having APIs in a half-way state isn't a great idea. But folks already do a
good job (in my experience) timing disruptive changes to land in ways that
are friendly to the release branching schedule.

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 1:57 PM Hans Wennborg via Openmp-dev <
openmp-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 6, 2017 at 9:28 AM, Hans Wennborg <hans at chromium.org> wrote:
> > Hello everyone,
> >
> > It's time to start making plans for the 6.0.0 release.
> >
> > Following our regular schedule, the branch would occur about two weeks
> > into January, on Wednesday 17 January 2018, with the goal of shipping
> > early March. This is the schedule I would propose.
> >
> > However, one large consumer of the branch has asked if we could start
> > earlier this time, branching on 3 January instead (not moving the ship
> > date), to get a longer period for stabilization that syncs with their
> > internal process.
> >
> > While I'm hesitant to change the schedule because I think it's
> > important that it's predictable, there is a benefit of having large
> > users "in sync" with the upstream release branch, as that means more
> > people testing the same code.
> >
> > I will be out of the office the first weeks of January (and I'm
> > guessing other members of the community might be too), so while I
> > could get the branch started on the 3rd, it would be a kind of
> > "slow-start" of the process, but still allow those who want to start
> > testing and nominating merges to do so.
> >
> > Ultimately, it comes down to what the community prefers. Should we
> > stick to the regular schedule, or should we do the "slow-start" two
> > weeks early this time?
> >
> > Let me know what you think, especially those of you involved in the
> > release testing.
>
> Since there wasn't really any opposition to the 3 January "slow start"
> suggestion, let's go with that. I propose the following schedule:
>
> 3 January 2018 - Branch point. Those who want can start testing and
> nominating merges.
> 17 January 2018 - Release Candidate 1 tag, testing of that starts.
> 7 February 2018 - Release Candidate 2, things should ideally look
> pretty good now
> 21 February 2018 - Final tag. (Typically this slips a bit; just try
> not to slip into March.)
>
> Unless there are any objections, I'll post this on the web page soon.
>
> Cheers,
> Hans
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