[LLVMdev] RFC: Bug fix releases for 3.3 and beyond

[Chris Lattner]

On Apr 2, 2013, at 9:51 AM, Tom Stellard <tom at stellard.net> wrote:
> I would really like to see the LLVM project start to make official bug fix
> releases (e.g. 3.3.1, 3.3.2, etc.).  I think that this would be useful for a
> lot of the users of LLVM, especially projects that use LLVM as a library.
> I am willing to help maintain bug fix releases, and I'm wondering if
> this is something that the LLVM project would officially support with
> a stable SVN branch and by hosting the official stable tarball releases.

This would be really useful, and definitely welcome.  The major thing that has historically prevented it from happening is manpower.  We have enough difficulty as it is pulling together the official major releases.

However, if someone was interested in being the "update release manager" and was willing to do the work to organize and qualify it, it could definitely happen.  Tom, are you personally interested in doing this?

-Chris

> 
> I realize that maintaining stable branches is a lot of work, so I would
> like to come up with a procedure that makes maintaining these branches
> as easy as possible.  Here is a rough idea of what I had in
> mind, but please suggest alternatives if you know of a better way:
> 
> 1. Developer fixes a bug or makes a change that he/she thinks would make
> a good candidate for the stable branch.  Commits would require approval
> from the Code Owner in order to be backported to stable.
> 
> 2a. When the developer commits that change, he/she adds to the end of the
> commit message something like:
> 
> Note: This is a candidate for the stable branch
> 
> 2b. Alternatively, if a user discovers a bug in a stable release that has
> been fixed in ToT, he/she could request to have the fix backported.
> 
> 3. The developer would be encouraged, but not required to cherry-pick the
> commit to the stable branch.  The stable maintainer would periodically
> search the commit logs and cherry-pick any commits that had been missed,
> consulting with the author of the commit in the case of a difficult
> merge conflict.
> 
> 4. After some interval of time, the stable maintainer would announce
> plans for a stable release and testing would begin.
> 
> What does everyone think?  Would something like this be doable?
> 
> Thanks,
> Tom
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