[Ayatana-dev] Handling merge requests that apply to Oneiric

[Neil Jagdish Patel <neil.patel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey,

Now that we've branched a stable Oneiric branch (lp:unity/4.0) and have 
bumped trunk (lp:unity) to 5.0, we have the problem that they'll start 
to diverge but there is a high chance in the coming weeks that a bug 
you're working on applies to both. So I just wanted to clear some things 
up on some "rules", as it were, on how to do things to make sure that we 
don't lose any fixes and the oneiric branch remains stable.

First and foremost, no branch can go into the oneiric stable 
(lp:unity/4.0) branch unless it has a bug linked *that has been approved 
by a release team member for SRU*. We can only put SRU fixes into the 
stable branch, so this is extremely important.

If you're working on an SRU fix (woohoo!), it's very likely that you 
also want to make sure it's in trunk so it goes into P too. This can go 
one of two ways:

 1. Your patch applies cleanly to both branches (i.e. isn't effected by
    the divergence). If so, please make a merge proposal against
    *lp:unity/4.0*, make sure the bug is linked, and note inside the
    request that it applies to both branches. The person who does
    the merge (either you or someone else), *should merge into both
    branches*.

 2. You need two branches as your patch is slightly different for trunk
    versus stable. That's fine, name the branches something like
    lp:~yourname/unity/fix-324324.trunk and .stable and make two merge
    proposals, one for each branch. Make sure the bug is linked. Whoever
    reviews one will do the other and they will both be approved/merged
    at the same time.

For any branch you merge-propose into lp:unity/4.0, please make sure it 
was based on lp:unity/4.0 and not lp:unity, otherwise your merge request
will bring in the rest of lp:unity, which is not what we want right now :)

Apart from that, lp:unity is open to larger changes again. Happy hacking!

--
Neil Jagdish Patel | System Architect
Desktop Experience Team
Canonical
27 Floor, Millbank Tower
London SW1P 4QP
Ubuntu - Linux for Human Beings
www.canonical.com