[Pulp-dev] Merging forward commits

[Sean Myers]

On 01/30/2017 04:55 PM, David Davis wrote:
> I was wondering if it might be worth considering cherrypicking commits to
> release branches instead of merging them forward from release branches. I
> might be a bit biased coming from Katello where we have done this for a
> while. For one thing I noticed that the git history in Pulp is very
> convoluted because of all the merge commits. Here is the git history of
> master in katello (bottom) compared to the git history of master in pulp
> (top):
> 
> https://i.imgur.com/PR5vNBZ.png
> 
> I think cherrypicking commits from master to release branches could also
> simplify our workflow a bit. Right now you have to identify what branch
> needs a hotfix before you open the PR and then you also have to update the
> appropriate branch(es) after merging. I think this presents a barrier to
> entry for community contributors by asking them to open a PR against a
> specific branch if they want to fix a bug instead of just master (which is
> the common paradigm in open source). Instead, with cherrypicking hotfixes,
> we’d only have to worry about updating branches as part of merging—which we
> have to do anyway as part of merging forward commits.
> 
> There might instances where this workflow doesn’t work as well as merging
> forward commits—namely when there are conflicts on a rebase branch or we
> need to test something specifically against a release—but I think we could
> just handle those one-off cases as they arise.
> 
> Thoughts?

We've had similar discussions in the past and, iirc, we're generally in favor
of moving to a cherry-picking model from master to release branches. The (a?)
problem is that the Pulp 2 build system is heavily dependent on the merge
forward logic, so if we did switch to cherry-picking, it would be for Pulp 3.

That said, I'm +1 for cherry-picking from master to release branches for Pulp
3+, and largely for the reasons you state here. As the current "guy who knows
which branch to open PRs against", it would be great if, when asked what branch
to open PRs against, the answer was always "master".

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