Stable branch reformatting issues

[Jeremy Huddleston]

Ok, well I'd like to definitely do this with 1.12 since it will make cherry picking from master *much* less painful.

Not doing it on 1.11 and 1.10 will mean that it will be difficult to cherry-pick back to those branches (which means they just won't get certain fixes that they previously would have due to lack of manpower).  So as I see it, we either leave stable-1.10-branch exactly where it is from now until eternity because we don't reformat it to take cherry picks or we reformat it to allow it to take cherry picks.  If you want the former, then there's nothing really stopping you from "pretending" and using the <reformat commit>^ commit as your base.


On Mar 19, 2012, at 11:54 AM, Chase Douglas <chase.douglas at canonical.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I see that Jeremy is interested in reformatting the stable branches at
> the same time we reformat the master development branch. While I
> understand how this would be very helpful, I'm worried about it.
> 
> In Ubuntu we have about 25 patches against the X server that we carry. I
> believe we are reviewing those patches each cycle and upstreaming them
> as we go, but our delta from upstream is non-trivial. I imagine other
> distros are similar, but I could be wrong.
> 
> If we reformat the stable branches, in Ubuntu we will have to either:
> 
> * Make a huge one-time change to each of our released packages:
>  - One big patch for the upstream reformatting
>  - Refreshes for every distro patch
>  - Perform checks to ensure nothing is broken (maybe Keith's assembly
>    checker will help)
> * Leave our packages as-is and deformat new upstream stable changes
> 
> We would need to make the decision above for each of our released
> packages. We have 5 releases in development or in support right now,
> though I'm not sure how many would be impacted.
> 
> Every distro will have to refresh it's patches at least by the time 1.13
> is released, so the effort there is of less concern. However, distro
> releases are usually based on upstream stable branches, and large-scale
> changes after release or even after feature freeze are frowned upon. As
> an example, I don't think the Ubuntu stable release or feature freeze
> criteria allow for code format changes, so we would have to get a big
> exception or leave our packages and deformat upstream stable changes.
> 
> If every distro is in the same position and can't update released
> packages with huge formatting rewrites, then the upstream stable
> reformatting would be pointless. As such, I don't think it would be wise
> to reformat the stable branches unless a majority of downstreams are in
> favor.