[yt-dev] Proposed change to development practices

Matthew Turk matthewturk at gmail.com
Mon Jan 19 09:25:17 PST 2015 

Hi Sam and Britton,

Okay, I think this is what we could do, although I'm somewhat concerned
that if we do "merge" from yt into stable we will catch the new development
too.  I was in my head thinking about periodic merges from stable into yt,
so that bugfixes propagate that way, which I think would work for this.

I'd also like to put out there that we do have the ability to do this on
our own, particularly with the hgbb extension.  In fact, we could make it
all a one-line command to backport based on PR number.  One could imagine
the maintainer seeing the bugfix, and then running a command line this:

hg yt_backport -n 1432

This would be an alias that performed these operations:

hg hgbbpr -p 1432
hg pull -r stable https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt
hg rebase --collapse -s "last(pr(1432))" -d stable -m "Backporting PR #1432
to stable" --keep
hg push -r stable https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/yt

This would pull in PR 1432, turn it into a single commit, commit that
commit with the message onto stable, and then push the new single commit
back up.  It would avoid too much commit count increasing, and would also
be nice and easy.  The maintainer could do this, or we could even have Fido
do it whenever a BUGFIX PR got committed to yt.  (Or if we marked it as
BACKPORT in the comments or something.)

Thoughts?

On Sun, Jan 18, 2015 at 7:17 AM, Britton Smith <brittonsmith at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Sam, this is an interesting idea that I think could work.  Perhaps we
> still need someone like a maintainer to keep us on a release schedule.
> Maybe this is a separate conversation, but it seems to me that the schedule
> releases tend to slip because it's not clear who is in charge of them.
>
> On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 4:22 PM, Sam Skillman <samskillman at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm in broad favor of this change in development practice.  However, I
>> want to float an idea and see how people feel:
>> At any time a pull request can be updated to change the branch to which
>> it is being applied, without re-issuing the pull request.  Therefore,
>> perhaps we could just suggest that all pull requests start out as a pull
>> request on the stable branch, and if through the pr review process it is
>> deemed more than a bugfix, it can be switched to the yt branch.  I think
>> that this mode, combined with bringing back a hard release schedule, could
>> work quite well.  Anyways, just wanted to throw that out there.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Sam
>>
>> On Sat Jan 17 2015 at 8:06:39 AM Ben Thompson <bthompson2090 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, I agree with the idea that we should have one branch where we push
>>> the updates. And the obvious bug fixes should be pushed into the stable
>>> repo (monitored by one person a month). Then put any of the new features
>>> into each new release. This means if people want a stable version that
>>> works, then they can have it (potentially means less updates for them too)
>>> Or if they want new features, then they can have that too.
>>>
>>> Ben
>>> On 17 Jan 2015 15:33, "Cameron Hummels" <chummels at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> +1
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 5:07 AM, Britton Smith <brittonsmith at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I want to reaffirm my support for having what Nathan has now referred
>>>>> to as a "maintainer."  I don't see a way of upholding procedural complexity
>>>>> without the intervention of an officially designated human being.  Who is
>>>>> for/against this?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 2:17 AM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Britton,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think there are a few ways to address this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One would be to encourage developers to do all their day-to-day work
>>>>>> on stable.  Another would be for all bugfix PRs to get automatically
>>>>>> grafted (and squashed) onto the stable branch or the yt branch.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> One thing we also have fallen away from, which we had for a while,
>>>>>> was the very rigorous and regular release schedule...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Britton Smith <
>>>>>> brittonsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Nathan,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This is a good discussion to be having and I definitely agree that
>>>>>>> bugfixes need to be making their way to the stable branch in real time.
>>>>>>> The added complication in procedure does worry me, specifically for someone
>>>>>>> whose first ever PR is to fix a bug they find, but I imagine even
>>>>>>> experienced developers are going to have trouble remembering.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I think this might go a lot more smoothly if we had someone
>>>>>>> officially designated for this duty, their job being to immediately push
>>>>>>> bugfixes to/from stable.  If we had that, then we could continue to have
>>>>>>> all PRs go into the development branch.  What do people think about this?
>>>>>>> If it were a rotating position, changing hands after releases, it might
>>>>>>> work.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Britton
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 10:02 AM, Suoqing JI <
>>>>>>> suoqing at physics.ucsb.edu> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I agree to the suggestion that the bugfix should also go into the
>>>>>>>> stable branch.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> as soon as a bugfix pull request to stable goes in, there should be
>>>>>>>> an accompanying merge from the stable branch into the yt branch to ensure
>>>>>>>> that both branches get bug fixes.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This is one possible way of doing it, so we can avoid the potential
>>>>>>>> “mixing” of the new features in yt branch into the stable branch:
>>>>>>>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7165989/mercurial-apply-a-bugfix-change-from-stable-named-branch-to-dev-branch
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Best wishes,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>> Suoqing JI
>>>>>>>> Ph.D Student
>>>>>>>> Department of Physics
>>>>>>>> University of California, Santa Barbara
>>>>>>>> CA 93106, USA
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Jan 13, 2015, at 3:44 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Now that yt 3.1 is making its way out the door, I'd like to come
>>>>>>>> back to a discussion we had last year about bugfixes.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I've made a pull request to the YTEP repository that summarized the
>>>>>>>> change I'm proposing:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> https://bitbucket.org/yt_analysis/ytep/pull-request/48/modify-ytep-1776-to-require-that-bugfixes/diff
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Basically, I think bugfixes need to go to the stable branch rather
>>>>>>>> than the yt branch.  Currently, all new changes go to the yt branch.  While
>>>>>>>> this does simplify our development practices, this makes it difficult for
>>>>>>>> us to release new versions that only include fixes for bugs.  Instead, even
>>>>>>>> minor version releases that are cut from the yt branch include new features
>>>>>>>> and API breakages.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I think this approach violates the principle of least surprise for
>>>>>>>> users who have download a bugfix release.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The solution, I think, is to ensure bugfixes are only applied to
>>>>>>>> the stable branch.  This will ensure that we can straightforwardly do
>>>>>>>> bugfix releases that inlude only bugfixes and that new features and API
>>>>>>>> changes are isolated to the more "experimental" yt branch.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This does come with some possible down sides.  In particular, there
>>>>>>>> will likely be some confusion as we switch our development practices.  In
>>>>>>>> addition, new contributors may find it difficult to split pull requests
>>>>>>>> into new features that should go to the yt branch and bugfixes that should
>>>>>>>> go to the stable branch.  It also adds a new maintenance burden: as soon as
>>>>>>>> a bugfix pull request to stable goes in, there should be an accompanying
>>>>>>>> merge from the stable branch into the yt branch to ensure that both
>>>>>>>> branches get bugfixes.  This gets more complicated if the bugfix looks
>>>>>>>> different in the yt branch and the stable branch.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> All that said, I think these new maintenance burdens can be
>>>>>>>> overcome with a bit of vigilance and maybe some new tooling.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I've probably said enough about this.  What do you all think?
>>>>>>>> Comments and concerns are very welcome.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Best,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Nathan Goldbaum
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> yt-dev mailing list
>>>>>>>> yt-dev at lists.spacepope.org
>>>>>>>> http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-dev-spacepope.org
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Cameron Hummels
>>>> Postdoctoral Researcher
>>>> Steward Observatory
>>>> University of Arizona
>>>> http://chummels.org
>>>>
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