From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:55066) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QrZ6G-0002V2-BH for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:31:21 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QrZ6E-0001RB-S7 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:31:20 -0400 Received: from mail-qy0-f173.google.com ([209.85.216.173]:36565) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1QrZ6E-0001R5-Jg for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:31:18 -0400 Received: by qyk31 with SMTP id 31so3807969qyk.4 for ; Thu, 11 Aug 2011 10:31:18 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4E43DD21.9030907@us.ibm.com> References: <4E43DD21.9030907@us.ibm.com> From: Blue Swirl Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:30:56 +0000 Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] Planning for 1.0 (and freezing the master branch) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Anthony Liguori Cc: Kevin Wolf , Stefan Hajnoczi , "Michael S. Tsirkin" , Marcelo Tosatti , "Justin M. Forbes" , qemu-devel , Avi Kivity , "Edgar E. Iglesias" , Aurelien Jarno , Gerd Hoffmann On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Anthony Liguori wrot= e: > Hi, > > I've posted an initial proposal for the 1.0 release on the wiki[1]. > > The release would be targeted for December 1st. =C2=A0Unlike previous rel= eases, > I'm proposing that instead of forking master into a stable branch and > releasing from there, we stop taking features into master and all work on > stablizing master. > > Historically, we forked stable for the releases simply because it was the > least intrusive way to get us on a somewhat reasonable release schedule. = =C2=A0I > think especially since we're targeting a 1.0, we're ready to get a bit mo= re > serious about releases. Even more historically, with CVS, not forking was the only way. > I see the following advantages in using master for releases: > > 1) All maintainers are participating in the process which means releases = are > much less likely to be delayed due to lack of time from a single person. > > 2) Everyone (contributors) are forced to focus on stability which should > improve the release's quality. > > 3) Feature development can still happen in maintainers trees. =C2=A0I thi= nk this > is an important step to moving to a merge-window based development model > which I think will be our best way to scale long term. > > Obviously, this will only work well if all the maintainers participate so > I'd really like to hear what everyone thinks about this. > > [1] http://wiki.qemu.org/Planning/1.0 In general the idea is OK. Especially soft freeze could solve problems like those qemu-ga inclusion had. Two weeks for soft freeze would be close to OK but I think a month of hard freeze is too long. With the previous releases, the problems in stable were ironed out within a week or two. How about 2 + 2? I'm not convinced about merge window model at least how it's used with Linux kernel development. There will be a lot of breakage during the merge window. Major changes at the same time would need major rebasing efforts since they would be developed and merged within same time frame. Also pretty strong coordination would be needed. We don't have the luxury of infinite army of monkeys lead by genius who has dedicated his entire life to the project like kernel has. I'd rather try to keep the code base at (sort of) release quality at all times and merge changes every now and then.