[Gluster-devel] Coming soon: Enforcing bug/version and git/branch for submitted patches in Gerrit

[Niels de Vos]

Hi all,

in todays meeting, we briefly touched upon a long overdue item.

For being able to track changes, and confirm that they have been fixed 
in certain releases, we need a bug per GlusterFS version if the change 
will be submitted for different branches.

Only this way, we can change the status of a bug to ON_QA with a alpha 
or beta version. It allows us to list all the bugs that have been fixed 
for a particular release.

With a new Jenkins job[1], the bug/version and git/branch will be 
checked, and an error is returned when there is a mismatch. So, if you 
are working on a patch, and want to send the patch to multiple branches, 
this is roughly what you need to do:

0. let us assume you work on a patch for mainline (Bug #1)
1. you post a patch against the master branch (ChangeId A)
2. you move Bug #1 to status POST
3. smoke tests are running, bug is for mainline, change for master: OK
4. you decide that the change is important enough to get fixed in 3.6
5. clone Bug #1 (click link in upper right corner in the Bug), as Bug #2
6. backport[2] ChangeId A to git branch release-3.6, this is ChangeId B
7. move Bug #2 to status POST

This process should be familiar to most developers. If not, it is 
probably time to check the "Bugs present in multiple Versions" paragraph
of the Bug Triage Guidelines[3].

At the moment, the bug/version and git/branch check is not enforced yet.  
The Jenkins job is running for each patch submission, but failures are 
ignored. After some time (a week, or maybe two) we can turn the failures 
into real errors. During this time, any feedback is much appreciated.  
Additional features or checks can be added on request.

For example:
  Should we allow submitting changes for bugs that are already in 
  MODIFIED, ON_QA or CLOSED state? Probably not, but this tends to 
  happen on occasion.

Please send any questions or comments to this list and/or me. If you 
have particular failures when posting a change and need clarification, 
let me know too.

Thanks,
Niels


[1] http://build.gluster.org/job/compare-bug-version-and-git-branch/
[2] http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Backport_Guidelines
[3] http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Bug_triage#Bugs_present_in_multiple_Versions