[Python-Dev] check-in policy, trunk vs maintenance branch

[Michael Hudson]

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:

> I made a few bugfix check-ins to the 2.3 maintenance branch this
> weekend and Michael Hudson commented that he thinks that so doing is
> a bad idea, that bug fixes should filter from the 2.4 trunk to the
> 2.3 branch and not the other way around.  Is this indeed the policy
> (have I missed some guidelines about it)?

Well, it's more practice than policy.  I guess the (my...) thinking
was that the trunk gets more testing, so it's a proving ground for
fixes.

It also depends on who's going to be release monkey for the next point
release.  The branch is to a certain extent "theirs" and they should
get to decide how things work.  I'm not sure who's got the hat at the
moment (Anthony?).

> I guess for this round of fixes I will find the time to forward-port
> them to the 2.4 trunk (in AMPLE time for a 2.4 release -- as 2.3.3
> is going to come well before 2.4 releases, the other way 'round
> wouldn't be quite so sure:-), but what about the future?  Should
> fixes applicable to both 2.3.* and 2.4 be made [a] always to both
> trunk and branch, [b] always to the trunk but to the branch only
> once one comes around to that, [c] always to the branch but to the
> trunk only once one comes around to that, ...?

My order of preference were I to be 2.3.3 monkey would be [a], then
[b].

> Oh, incidentally, if it matters -- most were docs issues, including
> as "docs" also some changes to comments that previously were
> misleading or ambiguous.
>
> I guess that my problem is that I think of 2.3.* fixes as things
> that will be useful to "the general Python-using public" pretty
> soon, with 2.4 far off in the future, so that it appears to me that
> trying to make 2.3.* as well fixed as possible has higher priority.
> But if that conflicts with policy, I will of course change anyway.

Maybe a decision could be made now and the conclusions written down
somewhere?  My habits are to do all work in the trunk checkout and
then backport, but I could adapt if the decision went the other way.

Sometimes it's not clear whether a fix is applicable to the branch,
for one thing.

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  Well, yes.  I don't think I'd put something like "penchant for anal
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                                 -- Matt McLeod, alt.sysadmin.recovery