Open Stack

On 08/08/2016 12:36 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
> On 2016-08-08 13:03:51 +0200 (+0200), Ihar Hrachyshka wrote:
>> Sean McGinnis <sean.mcginnis at gmx.com> wrote:
> [...]
>>> The suggestion was to just change our stable policy in regards to driver
>>> bugfix backports. No need to create and maintain more branches. No need
>>> to set up gate jobs and things like that.
>>
>> Unless you manage to get it approved for the global policy
> [...]
>
> That was the gist of my suggestion to Sean as far as bringing this
> discussion to the ML as a first option. Basically, if lots of
> projects see their driver maintainers and downstream distros forking
> their stable branches to add driver updates for support of newer
> hardware, then see if the current OpenStack Stable Branch policy
> should be amended to say that bug fixes and newer hardware support
> specifically in driver source code (as long as it doesn't touch the
> core service in that repo) are acceptable.
>
> As far as the tangent this thread has taken on changing when we
> delete stable branches, I feel like the only solution there is
> working with the Stable Branch team to find ways to properly extend
> support for the branches in question (including keeping them
> properly tested). There have been ongoing efforts to make stable
> branch testing less problematic, so it's possible over time we'll be
> able to increase the support duration for them. Stating that it's
> okay to keep them open for changes with no testing sets a terrible
> precedent.

The proposal isn't "no testing". The proposal is that the gate tests 
would be minimal. We would rely heavily on the 3rd party CI system to 
actually test the patch and tell us that nothing is broken. If the 3rd 
party CI systems can't be relied on for this purpose then they're 
useless IMO.

Yes a human would have to recognize that the patch affects a particular 
vendor and know which CI system to look at before putting his +2 on. 
This is an unfortunate effect of not having 3rd party CI vote.

-Ben Swartzlander