[U-Boot] U-Boot ARM merge strategy

[David Brownell]

On Saturday 25 April 2009, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
> > Yes.  The issue is needing to guess what's up ... so for
> > example, I seem to observe that "merge window closed" must
> > not be the same as "first RC is out", which isn't how the
> > Linux process works.  But that's the only example I've
> > seen for how the new u-boot cycles should work...

... although that wiki page you referenced does seem to
have been updated, on 3-April, to say that the next release
got renamed (to 2009.06) and its merge window closed.

I think the questions on this topic reflect a reality that
such status updates aren't yet visible enough.  (The original
question was generic, not ARM-specific.)


> Maybe I pout a little more meaning in the words "release candiate".

ISTR that Linus has said on occasion that "RC" doesn't
mean "release candidate"!


> After  the  end  of  a  merge  window,  there is usually still a long
> backlog of patches that has not been merged, and after that there are
> several rounds of debugging / bug fixing needed. IMO it makes  little
> sense to call anything in this state a "release candiate".

A Linux RC1 just means "end of merge window, now let's
start fixing all the bugs we've just let in."

You're not actually running the "merge window" quite like
Linux does; that "backlog" is one differentiator.


> That's why we still have no "rc" in the current release cycle.

May be worth reconsidering that, if for no other reason than
to make intermedite milestones less opaque ... example, there
was no suitably titled announcement in the list archives that
the 2009.05 release got re-labeled, but I did eventually find

  http://lists.denx.de/pipermail/u-boot/2009-April/050339.html

When the RC label just means "we only integrate bugfixes now",
that communicates such status with very little work.  If folk
miss some webpage, or mailing list post, they'll still know.

- Dave