Open Stack

It has been mentioned a couple of times in tangents to existing
discussions, and is listed on the etherpad, but I think it's worth
having a thread to discuss what affect long-lived branches will
have on the way we manage existing stable branches.

The point I've raised before is that we don't want to land patches
in a long-lived branch that aren't candidates for younger stable
branches. That avoids a situation where a patch is available in a
long-lived branch, then skips a stable branch (or two), and is again
available in the master branch so that users have it, then are broken if
they upgrade to one of those stable branches, then are fixed by
upgrading to the version on master.

I think that means we want the long-lived branches to continue the
policy for the final phase of the stable branches. I'm not at all sure
that conclusion meshes with anyone's idea of what those long-lived
branches should be for, though.

Is this conclusion a surprise to anyone? Would a long-lived branch
with a strict policy for landing patches be useful? What sorts of
patches would anyone consuming those branches expect to receive?

Should we discuss changes to the phases in the existing stable
policy as part of the long-lived branch discussion?

Doug