Suggestion: Changes to release process, release from branch

[Sam James]

"Andreas K. Huettel" <dilfridge@gentoo.org> writes:

> Hello everyone, 
>
> even though the next release is now still quite far away, I would like to already
> propose some (in my opinion) minor changes to the release process:
>
> * No changes to the procedure during soft freeze and freeze, no changes to basic
>   timetable
>
> * With the hard freeze two weeks before nominal/last possible release date, 
>   the release branch is made, and the master branch is re-opened for development.
>
> * The release branch is treated as "machine testing, only important bugfixes, 
>   minimal activity", basically as before master during that period.
>
> * Once things are OK, the release is cut from the release branch.
>
> This has several advantages. What comes to my mind:
>
> * The master branch is open earlier for the backlog of accumulated patches again.
>
> * There is less chance of stray commits being pushed at last minute.
>
> * Distros can treat the branch point as a release candidate for testing purposes.
>   We could even add a corresponding tag.
>
> * Last but not least, this means we'd be handling releases similar to gcc and
>   binutils.
>
> What do you think?

Yes please, for all the reasons you've mentioned.

No downsides come to mind, other than perhaps a caveat which gcc
applies: they ask people not to apply huge changes as soon as master
opens / the branch is made, so that backports can be done without too
much hassle (and so the things to-be-backported are effectively the same
as what was on master, and so received some testing). But that's not a
big deal I think.

>
> Cheers, 
> Andreas

sam
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