[Qgis-developer] The case for bugfix releases

[Sandro Santilli]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 02:41:27PM -0600, Larry Shaffer wrote:

> A possible solution is to have a 'release freeze' period that extends the
> freezes reasonably beyond the package releases, with devs strictly focusing
> on addressing immediate issues with the current release, committing the
> fixes to master branch. Any timely fixes can quickly be ported (maybe just
> easily cherry-picked) between branches. 

I think this is a good idea, for the future, as it augments the probabilities
that fixes apply cleanly to the stable branch.
Unfortunately it's too late for 2.0.

Another trick to help with backporting can be, for developers, to keep two
different directories with the source code: one tracking master and one
tracking last stable branch, to reduce the cost of testing if a bug exists
in the stable branch and fix it there (running qgis from build dir is
possible since 2.0).

This doesn't only help with maintaining the stable branch, but also with
verifying regressions (a bug that exists in master but doesn't exist in
the stable branch is a regression and should block next release).

--strk;