Drop latest stable branch once new stable RC1 branch is created

Development
#1

Hi devs,

Right now we drop the previous stable branch only when the new final stable release is done.

The problem is that this leads to having to support 4 branches:

  • master
  • LTS
  • last stable branch
  • new stable branch

That’s a lot and in practice it causes the following problems:

  • We still need to backport important bugs to the last stable branch during that time
  • We have our CI swamped a bit more since it needs to build even more branches

In practice once we have a RC1, we are only 1 week from a final. Thus I don’t think we ever needed to release a new bug fix version for the last branch instead of waiting for the new stable release.

I’m thus proposing to make it a bit simpler for us and to drop the previous stable branch when the new RC1 branch is created, thus following our support strategy at https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Support#HCommunitySupport which says we support 3 branches (and not 4).

WDYT?

Thanks

#3

Well not a good example, since it’s something introduced in 12.5RC1, so doesn’t make sense to cherry-pick in 12.4.x branch :slight_smile:

+1

#4

hmm right, I’ve bugged… sorry :wink:

#5

+1

Thanks,
Marius

#6

+1

#7

Ok it’s now documented at https://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/ReleasePlans/ReleasePlanTemplate?viewer=changes&rev1=89.3&rev2=90.1&

#8

12.4.x branches have now been removed.