[Python-Dev] Community buildbots (was Re: User's complaints) (original) (raw)

Giovanni Bajo rasky at develer.com
Fri Jul 14 15:06:06 CEST 2006

skip at pobox.com wrote:

Greg> Maybe there could be an "unstable" release phase that lasts for a Greg> whole release cycle. So you'd first release version 2.n as Greg> "unstable", and keep 2.(n-1) as the current "stable" release. Then Greg> when 2.(n+1) is ready, 2.n would become "stable" and 2.(n+1) would Greg> become the new "unstable".

In GCC don't they do an odd (stable)/even (unstable) release schedule? Same for Linux kernels? Would that help?

No. Linux kernel releases are more aggressive because of the fact that all the patches are mostly developed in different branch/repositories and get merged when they are already well tested and incorporated. Linus can merge literally hundreds of patches daily into his stable tree, and do releases from it even weekly, because most destabilizing works are being done in large branches carried on for months before they even are evaluated for being merged; or because patches were settled in the -mm tree for months. Linus' tree is kind-of a release branch, with the difference that he is the BDFL and does what he wants with his tree :) To keep this into perspective, remember also that they don't have any kind of testsuite (nor a debugger, if I might say).

GCC has a more "old-fashioned" release process, where the trunk evolves through 3 stages: Stage 1 is open for all kind of changes (eg: from simple polishing/refactoring, to merging of large branches containing work of several man-years). Stage 2 is still open for new features, but not for big merges. Stage 3 is feature-freezed, bug-fixing only. Then, the trunk is branched into the new release branch, and the trunk gets back to Stage 1. Nominally, a stage lasts 3 months, but Stage 3 often stretches up to 6 months.

The release branches are open for only regression fixes (that is, fixes that correct things that used to work in previous releases but do not work anymore). Any regression fix (with a corresponding Bugzilla entry, where it's marked and confirmed as "regression") is applied to trunk and the open release branches where the regression exists. For convoluted or dangerous regression fixes, usually maintainers prefer to wait 1 week for the patch to settle down on the trunk before applying it to the release branches. The release manager pulls dot releases from the release branch. Usually, the first release (.0) happens 3-4 months after the release branch was created, that is after several months of regression-only patches being merged to it (while new work is being done on the trunk in parallel, in its aggressive Stage 1).

The 3-Stage work in the trunk is streamlined by the release manager. At the beginning of Stage 1, a detailed techinical list of on-going "projects" (new features) is presented to the mailing list, explaining the current status of the work and its ETA, and the release manager then publishes a work-plan for Stage 1 and 2, telling which projects will be merged when. This avoids multiple large projects to hit the trunk at the same time, causing may headaches to all the other developers. The work-plan is managed and updated in the GCC Wiki (which is off-line right now, but I'll post a link as example when it's back).

Giovanni Bajo

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