From 0a99ba0d35729395247dbaa49ab1d08fb94ed6f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Marian Buschsieweke Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2019 17:41:10 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] MAINTAINING.md: Added doc on release process Added informations relevant to maintainers on how the normal review process differs during the feature freeze, or when the are targeting a release rather than the master branch. --- MAINTAINING.md | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 22 insertions(+) diff --git a/MAINTAINING.md b/MAINTAINING.md index f4728a5ff7..124c65ec0f 100644 --- a/MAINTAINING.md +++ b/MAINTAINING.md @@ -155,6 +155,28 @@ GitHub's review sidebar. If there are multiple maintainers reviewing a PR, always give the other maintainers reasonable time to ACK before dismissing their review. +### Release, Feature Freeze, and Backports + +Before the official release of a new RIOT version, two feature freeze periods +are announced on the +[RIOT development email list](https://lists.riot-os.org/mailman/listinfo/devel): +The soft feature freeze and the hard feature freeze. During the soft feature +freeze only PRs with minor impact should be merged into master. The hard feature +freeze begins when the release manager creates a new release branch. Therefore, +the restriction on merging PRs into the master branch are lifted at that point. + +Once the release branch is created, no backports of new features will be +accepted. Instead, backports should consist only of bug fixes or of reverting +features that were added during the last development period (and not part of any +release), but didn't reach the required maturity or API stability yet. For +bigger changes (which explicitly includes any revert), the PR has to be +announced to the maintainer mailing list and should be merged no sooner than +48h after the announcement and needs at least two ACKs. + +In case of security relevant backports (both bug fixes and reverts), the +announcement can be skipped and the fix merged once at least two ACKs are +there. + [list of maintainers]: https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/Maintainers [Best Practices]: https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/Best-Practice-for-RIOT-Programming [Comparing build sizes]: https://github.com/RIOT-OS/RIOT/wiki/Comparing-build-sizes