[yocto] [meta-raspberrypi] Stable branch plans

[Andrei Gherzan]

Hello all,

On Tue, May 2, 2017 at 12:19 PM, Paul Barker <pbarker at toganlabs.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've now got a bit of a vested interest in the next meta-raspberrypi
> stable branch as I'm planning to use it as a demo platform for our new
> Oryx distro.
>

I like that most of the people around meta-rpi have direct interest
based on products they maintain / develop. This makes us all closely
evolved.

> In the past, the stable branch hasn't been created for a while after
> the corresponding oe-core release. The changes made to the stable
> branch after this haven't always been as conservative as I'd have
> liked as well but that's just one opinion.

I think we all agree that this is a trade off. We went down the late
branch off strategy because stability was not of highest importance.
And to be honest you can always "know" where to checkout even if you
don't have a branch. I recommend an aggregation repository with
submodules if you want to seal a specific setup.

On the other hand I saw many times people getting confused on what
branch to use. And I do think that the general trend is to match the
branch name across all the layers you are using in your product.

>
> I'd like to propose the following for the pyro branch:
>
> * We should create the pyro branch within a week or two of the oe-core
> pyro release.
>
> * After the pyro branch is created, changes on the pyro branch should
> roughly follow the oe-core stable branch policy
> (https://wiki.yoctoproject.org/wiki/Stable_branch_maintenance#Policies).
> I don't think we need to be incredibly strict but I do think we should
> avoid making changes which may affect the behaviour of existing
> recipes/bbappends. I would like us to keep doing stable-branch kernel
> updates and adding new MACHINE definitions where possible without
> affecting existing MACHINEs.
>
> This would make the pyro branch perfect for my use case. But obviously
> I'm not the meta-raspberrypi maintainer and I'm not the only person
> with a use case. So I'd like to know what others think of this, is
> this a good plan for meta-raspberrypi stable branches or should we be
> more relaxed?
>
> (I raised similar questions in response to another thread but I think
> that email may have been missed by a few people so I'm starting a new
> thread here in expectation that the oe-core pyro release is imminent)
>

I would vote for this too. Early branch off using stability branches.