gluster-kubernetes Release and Maintenance Policies

August 24, 2017 ยท View on GitHub

This document outlines the release and maintenance policies of the gluster-kubernetes project.

Maintained Branches

The project will only support and actively maintain two branches, master and the latest release branch. The latest release branch will always be reachable by two HEADs, <VERSION>-latest and stable. Requests for support of older branches may be considered on a case-by-case basis, but users will be encouraged to use newer versions where possible.

Version Numbering

This project follows the versioning guidelines outlined by the Semantic Versioning specification, version 2.0.0. In short, versions numbers will follow the structure <MAJOR>.<MINOR>.<PATCH>, with the following definitions:

  • MAJOR version indicates a fundamental change to the structure of the project, often due to innovations from significant changes in the component projects. Major versions will typically not be compatible with older versions of the component projects.
  • MINOR version indicates a major feature, a broad set of changes, and/or new releases of the component projects. Minor versions retain the following compatibility guarantees:
    1. Component projects from the last MAJOR release will still work with the current code.
    2. Deployments made with the current code will not conflict with other deployments made since the last MAJOR release.
  • PATCH version indicates backwards-compatible bug fixes, and guarantees that the versions of the component projects has not changed.

Branch Definitions and Structure

The master branch will always contain the latest development code. The project guarantees that this branch will be functional and tested but not bug-free. It will always track the latest versions of all component projects and makes no guarantee of backwards compatibility to older versions of those projects or itself.

The stable branch will track the latest stable release of the code. When a new release is made, the stable branch will be moved to follow the new release branch.

Each MAJOR and MINOR release will get its own branch, forked from master. Each release branch name will be of the form <VERSION>-latest, e.g. 1.0-latest. PATCH releases to those versions will be made in those branches, and will be marked by tags of the form v<VERSION>, e.g. v1.0.0. PATCH releases may contain more than one commit, depending on the whimsy of the release engineers. :)

Commits to a release branch will be of the following types, ranked in order of preference:

  1. Direct cherry-picks from master (git cherry-pick -sx)
  2. Cherry-picks from master modified to resolve conflicts (change cherry picked from commit to based on commit)
  3. Custom patches

An example git history is presented below.

* I (master)
|
* H  * H' (1.1-latest, stable) tag: v1.1.0
|    |
|    * G
|    |
|   /
|  /
| /
|/
* F  * F' (1.0-latest) tag: v.1.0.3
|    |
* E  * E' tag: v1.0.2
|    |
|    * D
|    |
* C  * C' tag: v1.0.1
|    |
|    * B  tag: v1.0.0
|   /
|  /
| /
|/
* A