[Mesa-dev] Stable release process

[Emil Velikov]

Hi Matt,

On 14 November 2016 at 22:31, Matt Turner <mattst88 at gmail.com> wrote:
> A long time ago, patch authors were tasked with cherry-picking their
> patches to stable branches. Today we Cc
> mesa-stable at lists.freedesktop.org and Emil rebases those patches onto
> stable. Cc'ing the list happens even on patches sent for their first
> review that are ultimately rejected, creating a lot of noise (and
> presumably makes the mailing list less useful).
>
I believe it's the increased volume (overall) and off-list decisions
make things a bit confusing. Then again, the latter happens quite
rare, so I don't believe it's an issue.

In the early stages I was going through the mesa-stable@ list for
patches that have fallen through the cracks.
It seemed quite useful, yet people did not had time or just dropped
the ball on patches. My prodding seems to have caused annoyance, so
I've opted against it.

So my question is:
Do people agree with my prodding, should we revive it ?

> Initial questions:
>
> Is the mesa-stable@ mailing list useful (other than as a tag in a
> committed patch)?
>
Yes, mesa-stable is useful. We had a number of fixes that landed
explicitly thanks to it.

> What do "nominated" and "queued" in the stable release candidate
> announcements actually mean?
>
Those terms originated when Carl was around and seems to be commonly
asked topic:
 - Nominated:
Patch that is nominated but yet to to merged in the patch
queue/branch. There are three* ways to nominate a patch, which I'd
imagine can be causing confusion.
 - Queued:
Patch is in the queue/branch and will feature in the next release.
Barring reported regressions objections from developers.

> Should driver maintainers cherry-pick patches to stable on their own?
>
I'd suggest against that where possible.

> Regardless of the outcome of that question, I think we would the
> process would be more transparent and predictable if patches were
> incorporated into the branch over time rather than all at once a few
> days before the release.
Fully, agree. I'm dusting off a series on the topic and will send to
the list by EOD.

Thanks
Emil
* Official ones and one unofficial that people opt for. Latter of
which being the core/sole reason behind "forgotten" patches.