[Pulp-dev] Merging forward commits

[Michael Hrivnak]

This comes up periodically, and we've had split opinions for a long time.
I've been in the camp that likes merging, and finds it intuitive. But I'm
open to trying cherry-picking since there is a lot of interest.

I must admit, I am always surprised when people describe merging forward as
complicated. For me, it boils down to this:

- Features happen on master. No merging or cherry-picking required.
- Bug fixes happen on the last release branch. Merge your bugfix branch to
master and the release branch. Simple.
- Hotfixes are a rare exception that require slightly more thought, but are
still easy to reason about. If in doubt, "git merge-base [list all the
places you want to merge your fix]" tells you where to branch from.

That's the extent of my thought process when merging forward. I am
generally interested to know more about how this process causes friction.

But all of that said, I'm very happy to give cherry-picking a try. As Brian
said, my main concern would just be tracking where a change has been
applied. This is something I value a lot in the merge model.

If we do switch, I think we should first write down specifically what
benefits we expect to get. That would help in two ways: 1) Make sure
everyone is on the same page about what we expect to gain. I suspect there
are differing assumptions across the group. 2) Enable us to evaluate
afterward to what extent the change was successful.

Lastly, our current branching model was inspired by this classic approach:

http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/

If you're not familiar, it's worth a read for perspective. Their "develop"
branch is our "master". And obviously we don't do things in quite the same
way, but the general principles are the same.

Michael

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Brian Bouterse <bbouters at redhat.com> wrote:

> The main concern for me is how to track the cherry picks in Redmine. Using
> the rebase and merge approach, or if Github had a dedicate cherry pick
> feature, we still need a way in Redmine to know if any given bugfix has
> been applied to older release streams, i.e. the current bugfix release
> stream.
>
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 12:18 PM, Jeremy Audet <jaudet at redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> > Thinking out loud, it would be nice if github would support a "cherry
>> pick" PR
>>
>> I think you can. The submitter just needs to open a PR against some
>> branch other than master, and the merger needs to select the rebase and
>> merge <https://github.com/blog/2243-rebase-and-merge-pull-requests> GUI
>> option.
>>
>
>
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