[Rdo-list] [Softwarefactory-dev] Gitnetics integration, or how can we automate upstream changes polling

[Haïkel]

2016-02-04 16:49 GMT+01:00 Emilien Macchi <emilien at redhat.com>:
>
>
> While we're pushing "upstream first", we'll probably have custom
> patches, for the long term maintenance process.
> I don't say "I want to have downstream-only patches", I just say "we
> need to be able to backport upstream patches to our downstream branches,
> because not all upstream projects accepts backports to stable branches.
>
> For example in Puppet modules: Upstream accepts backports until
> stable/kilo but not after. What if we have a case where we need to do so?
>

RDO lifecycle currently mirrors upstream, so it should seldom but we
can manage that properly.

> Big +1 to reduce to 0 the number of downstream-only patches, but we
> might want to be able to have some process allowing us to do it for
> exceptions.
>

We have few exceptions already, and rdopkg automatically rebase your
patchsets for updates.
It's more about rebasing downstream patches on top of upstream
branches, rather than cherry-picking upstream patches on top of
downstream patches.
The amount of work to fix rebase conflicts is sensibly the same or
even lesser than rebasing. And it makes much easier to track
downstream only patches and keeping their number low.

I know there was good reasons in the past to do that, but our
long-term goal is to do better.

>
> Yeah, it's doable, though the upstream backport policy is not the same
> as we have in RDO I guess.
> --
> Emilien Macchi
>

In short, it's fine to have downstream patches as long as we keep
their number as low as possible.