[sakai2-tcc] Proposal: Merging Small Enhancements into Maintenance Branches

[Jean-Francois Leveque]

Beth:

I think the bug fixes process description does not fit current 
practices. It does not account the fact that the MT does not work on 
branch management 
(https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MNT/process), even if it 
could be considered lead as set in JIRA. It does not account the work 
done by the maintenance branch managers (I cannot find an up-to-date 
page with a list of 2.6.x and 2.7.x branch managers on confluence). It 
does not account the fact that sometimes the lead is not involved in 
maintenance branch work.

The whole process description does not state who's gonna do the merges. 
The problem is, AFAICT, that we don't have enough maintenance branch 
manager time to deal with merging the bug fixes. The state of the merge 
requests status for 2.7.x issues could be used as proof.

I think the community contribution in maintenance branch management is 
not up to the task of merging bug fixes and it would be a bad idea to 
try to do more merges before we have more contribution. Maybe this 
tentative policy could be evaluated again in 3, 6 months or at least 
when 2.8.0 has been released.

As far as the qualifications for enhancements are concerned, lots of 
questions are pending:
Who evaluates the scope of the change?
Who reviews the change if it's code under MT lead?
Who review the influence on i18n?
How making the change non-disruptive can keep the scope of the change small?
Could the community members have a way to oppose the merge before it's 
done instead of having to deal with it when it's done? How long in 
advance will the change be announced?
How are we avoiding merging changes that are only requested by one or a 
few institution and seen as dangerous by others?
How are we dealing with the increased maintenance cost from code lead 
and QA point of view?

I think we lack the people to populate all those who questions and this 
is another reason to delay the evaluation of this tentative policy.

J-F

Beth Kirschner a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
>    Following today's TCC phone call, we decided to update the following proposal by requiring a vote of any and all enhancements prior to merging them into a maintenance branch: https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/TCC/Maintenance+Branch+Merge+Policy+%28tentative%29
> 
>    We decided to allow one additional week to re-read the current proposal and respond on this list before asking for a vote on January 20th.
> 
> Thanks,
> - Beth