[LLVMdev] Project Release Branches

[32bitmicro]

John,

> Dear Pawel and All,
> 
> Pawel (and other release managers), can you ask the project maintainers
> for each project whether they want a release branch before creating it
> next time?  Alternatively, can you leave branch creation up to the
> project maintainers as in the past?

 I think asking project maintainers for a go/no-go for branch creation
is a very good idea that should be incorporated into the LLVM release
process.

> 
> Pawel, you created a release_32 branch of SAFECode last night without my
> consultation.  That commit itself is fine since we just happen to be
> tracking LLVM mainline right now; I'll just tell SAFECode developers to
> move development to the release_32 branch. However, in general, you
> can't assume that SAFECode mainline is tracking LLVM mainline; if you
> do, and we're not, you may fork a release branch before all changes to
> the previous release branch have been folded back into mainline.
> 

 John, it was not my intention to disrupt your work in any way.
However, branching for release is a bit of a grey area and I
have made a judgment call to branch SAFECode in sync with llvm.
This could have been a bit overzealous but I am used to
"release at any time" approach or agile project management.

 Since LLVM/Clang has grown so much I think the release process
will require some adjustment to keep up with the sheer size of it.
>From my experience it is hard to make progress without accepting
changes while at the same time making changes usually leads to
some unintentional breakages.

 As for the SAFECode, perhaps I have made assumptions
on how you track mainline that are not valid.
It would be constructive to have your perspective on how
to manage release of a project dependent on the LLVM.

> Thanks.
> 
> -- John T.
> 
> 

Pawel