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

[Sebastien DELDON-GNB]

Hi Tom,

This is a great idea, we have ourselves back-ported fixes from trunk in LLVM 3.2 we are using. 
For stable release is it reasonable to count on a new BUG-fix release every two months for instance ?

Seb

> -----Original Message-----
> From: llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu [mailto:llvmdev-bounces at cs.uiuc.edu]
> On Behalf Of Tom Stellard
> Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2013 6:52 PM
> To: LLVM Developers Mailing List
> Subject: [LLVMdev] RFC: Bug fix releases for 3.3 and beyond
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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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