Open Stack

Mark McLoughlin <markmc at redhat.com> writes:

> Hey,
>
> I've posted a proposal for how the stable branch could work here:
>
>   http://wiki.openstack.org/StableBranch
>
> and a proposed diablo branch for nova:
>
>   http://github.com/markmc/nova/tree/diablo
>
> The wiki page seems to be 404 for folks for some bizarre reason, but you
> can get to it from:

Works for me.

> I've also appended it below so folks can reply to specific points
> inline.

Thanks for getting this started!

> Each project will have a branch named after the previous release. For
> example, the stable branch for the diablo release will be simply
> called 'diablo'.

Sounds good.  I'll create branches in gerrit named 'diablo' branching
from the commit with the 2011.3 tag.  I think we can update the release
management process to incorporate this step for essex.

> The stable branch will only be maintained until the next release is out.

My preference is to only have branches in gerrit and on github where we
are actively accepting changes.  Otherwise it may appear that we would
accept proposed changes to diablo indefinitely.  So I'd like to suggest
that when the maintainers stop maintaining the branch that we tag the
last commit and then remove the branch.  We won't lose any information
this way; the tag alone is enough to access the commit history of the
branch.  This is the current process in place for milestone-proposed.

> Anyone can propose a cherry-pick to the maintainers. This helps ensure
> that the maintainers don't miss anything. To catch the maintainers
> attention, simply add
>
>  Cc: stable at openstack.org

Are you planning on grepping commit logs for that, or are you asking
people to email that address?

> to the commit message. If the patch you're proposing will not
> cherry-pick cleanly, you can help by resolving the conflicts yourself
> and proposing the resulting patch.
>
> All changes to the stable branch will go through gerrit. The branch
> maintainers and core teams of each project can +1 the changes.

Permissions in gerrit can be configured on a per-branch basis.
Currently, we let anyone +/-1 a change, and only core devs can +/-2.  A
strict analog would be to continue to allow general +/-1 feedback and
only members of the maintainers team or core devs can +/-2.  How does
that sound?

I've created a group in Launchpad, openstack-stable-maint ("Openstack
Stable Branch Maintainers"), that I'll give permission to approve
changes to stable branches in Gerrit.  As we discussed an the summit,
I've added Chuck Short, Dave Walker, and Mark McLoughlin as admins to
that group; they can approve membership applications.

Thanks again for writing this up!

-Jim