[llvm-dev] 4.0.1 Release Schedule + Need feedback for improving stable releases

[Renato Golin via llvm-dev]

Hi Tom,

First, kudos for the new merge scripts.

On 29 March 2017 at 11:14, Hans Wennborg via llvm-dev
<llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> (...) I don't find the release testing itself to be
> particularly burdensome. The hard part of releases is chasing down and
> fixing bugs, but for .2 releases I expect the process to be pretty
> smooth, basically building and testing  a build with a few extra
> patches on top of .1.

I agree with Hans. This is why dot releases cannot have any new
feature in it, no matter how small.


> I think it's more a problem of finding someone to configure and
> maintain the bots.

Yup.

Finding the available hardware that is upstream, outside firewalls and
ready for deployment as buildbots, either all year round or on/off
during releases, is going to be hard.

If/when we move to Jenkins, this could be easier, but right now, it's
pretty hard.


> I'm not sure this is worth it. Aren't many of the "we should merge
> this to stable" decisions made after the commit lands?

Again, agreed. The decision process should be a conscious one, and
with review from the release manager, code owner, etc.

Simple scripting won't go all the way to providing that auditing path
and could make release branches unstable.

Release testing isn't complicated enough to automate that part, at
least not yet.

If/when we have more tests beyond the test-suite, we'll have to
investigate each individual test on their own.

For now, involving distros and large projects directly is the easiest
way to test the release.

cheers,
--renato