keeping an eye on old versions
I think that there is no policy! The ideal would be the availabity of one person responsable for each release when a new one goes out. That person would maintain the release, applying patches or backports. The problem is that no one wants to maintain old releases (we should maintain the last 3 releases), and the persons who want to maintain old releases are not *senior* enough to make critical decisions. Regards, Fernando Silva On 10/19/06, Robert Garrigós Castro <robert@garrigos.cat> wrote:
How do we keep an eye on old versions of Drupal? What's the policy on this, if any?
I'm asking this because I posted a patch for 4.6.9 ( http://drupal.org/node/21568) which I believe it would have been nice to have on 4.6.10, just released. It might not be ready to apply (I believe it is) but then someone had had to change it's state. By the way, this is the only one critical bug for 4.6.9 (I believe it is critical because it can brake your site in some cases - http://drupal.org/node/39710)
I know all our efforts are concentrated on drupal 5.0 but I guess there are many people out there using old versions (and many clients of us). I'm not criticising any one suposed to do this job, don't get me wrong. I just want to know if there is any policy and, if possible, how can we improve it. I might volunteer to do a regular search on critical bugs for old versions (actually that's easy with a feed) , revise them, and let whoever is in charge know about them _before_ any new minor release.
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Robert Garrigós
Fernando Silva wrote:
I think that there is no policy!
The ideal would be the availabity of one person responsable for each release when a new one goes out. That person would maintain the release, applying patches or backports.
The problem is that no one wants to maintain old releases (we should maintain the last 3 releases), and the persons who want to maintain old releases are not *senior* enough to make critical decisions.
We do maintain the last two releases. As of Drupal 4.7 every release has a dedicated maintainer. There is no such maintainer for 4.6, that's why there are less bug fixes in 4.6 than in 4.7. Cheers, Gerhard
On 19 Oct 2006, at 11:11, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
We do maintain the last two releases. As of Drupal 4.7 every release has a dedicated maintainer. There is no such maintainer for 4.6, that's why there are less bug fixes in 4.6 than in 4.7.
I do tend to commit patches against DRUPAL-4-6 given that they had enough eyeballs/testing. The 4.6 patch of that issue has not yet been tested. With some testing, we can fix it in Drupal 4.6.11. As of Drupal 4.7, each release cycle will have a dedicated maintainer. Gerhard maintains Drupal 4.7, Neil will maintain Drupal 5.0, and I'm on the outlook for a Drupal 6.0 maintainer. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
As of Drupal 4.7, each release cycle will have a dedicated maintainer. Gerhard maintains Drupal 4.7, Neil will maintain Drupal 5.0, and I'm on the outlook for a Drupal 6.0 maintainer. You probably mean Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 ;)
Konstantin
Op vrijdag 20 oktober 2006 15:33, schreef Dries Buytaert:
As of Drupal 4.7, each release cycle will have a dedicated maintainer. Gerhard maintains Drupal 4.7, Neil will maintain Drupal 5.0, and I'm on the outlook for a Drupal 6.0 maintainer.
This is not an official proposition yet :). I need to give it more thoughts. But Heine and chx asked me if I am interested in maintaing 4-6, which am, since I run about 7 sites on 4.6 wich I dont want to upgrade (I don't have a reason to, but thats a whole different story). I have a hosting platform where I still run 4.6, untill the owners have budget to upgrade these sites, so I 'need' 4.6 rather often. Hence I started http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-4-6-maintainance I wouldn't mind becoming the maintainer for 4.6, especially if there are enough people willin to carry that version together. But biggest issue is that my plate is full, too full. So in the case that I were to maintain this version (I am by far not sure if I am deemed the right person first of all!), I'd need to drop at least half of my contribs (approx 8); most notably flexinode. And I would most probably need to hand over maintainance for themes.drupal.org to someone else. I think we should continue this particular fork in the discussion on infrastructure. :) I am not yet askig anyone to volunteer for taking over any of the above-mentioned though :), lets first see what needs be done first :) Also, I would like to know: Are there more people willing to spend less-voluntary time on 4.6 maintainance. It's really not much, but we would need hands and eyes in case of sec. holes found. I am not 100% available for Drupal. Sometimes gone for days or weeks (deadlines and stuff). Are there more people willing to randomly eyeball patches. And/or backport patches. It makes little sense to maintain a 4.6 branch if no-one is actually doing that maintainance. Are there more people interested in a maintained Drupal 4.6 in general. 'Being interested' meaning: yes I still run it, and would be happy if its maintained somewhere. Bèr -- [ Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com ] Drupal repareert drie lekken, waarvan één kritiek: http://help.sympal.nl/drupal_repareert_drie_lekken_waarvan_een_kritiek
Hi Bèr (NOTE: you probably remember me from posting some code on Flexinode area) As some people know, two month ago I pushed the number of bugs/features within 4.6 from 8 pages to 2. I was a quite bit annoyed that some of the patches and questions were not being address by senior developers. I also have too many drupal 4.6 sites with custom code to upgrade them to drupal 5 (for me 4.7 was a really bad release, that I decided not to use), and I have in the present moment 8 projects to be worked, where at least 4 will still be done with 4.6 This means that I have time to test patches, and backport some code from newer releases to 4.6 (for example, I made some hacks to contact.module to have a captcha, or even I made some hacks to have contact.module work with i18n) I know I am not the best person to maintain a release for two factors: * I do not have the best english to describe, explain and argument (and a person should have a good english to make a point) * I am not in the level like chx, Bèr, Killes, beginner or others. I know that I have still too much to learn to have strength to maintain a release like 4.6 (the most stable and complete release so far) I want to help: * checking and testing patches * backporting some features that I really needed * try to optimize the 4.6 version where it can be done: for example 4.6 does not run with mysql 5 and I really don't know why; or it still has cache problems, that some other people still report against about 4.7 and 5. Best regards, Fernando Silva On 10/20/06, Bèr Kessels <ber@webschuur.com> wrote:
Op vrijdag 20 oktober 2006 15:33, schreef Dries Buytaert:
As of Drupal 4.7, each release cycle will have a dedicated maintainer. Gerhard maintains Drupal 4.7, Neil will maintain Drupal 5.0, and I'm on the outlook for a Drupal 6.0 maintainer.
This is not an official proposition yet :). I need to give it more thoughts.
But Heine and chx asked me if I am interested in maintaing 4-6, which am, since I run about 7 sites on 4.6 wich I dont want to upgrade (I don't have a reason to, but thats a whole different story). I have a hosting platform where I still run 4.6, untill the owners have budget to upgrade these sites, so I 'need' 4.6 rather often.
Hence I started http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-4-6-maintainance
I wouldn't mind becoming the maintainer for 4.6, especially if there are enough people willin to carry that version together. But biggest issue is that my plate is full, too full. So in the case that I were to maintain this version (I am by far not sure if I am deemed the right person first of all!), I'd need to drop at least half of my contribs (approx 8); most notably flexinode. And I would most probably need to hand over maintainance for themes.drupal.org to someone else. I think we should continue this particular fork in the discussion on infrastructure. :) I am not yet askig anyone to volunteer for taking over any of the above-mentioned though :), lets first see what needs be done first :)
Also, I would like to know: Are there more people willing to spend less-voluntary time on 4.6 maintainance. It's really not much, but we would need hands and eyes in case of sec. holes found. I am not 100% available for Drupal. Sometimes gone for days or weeks (deadlines and stuff). Are there more people willing to randomly eyeball patches. And/or backport patches. It makes little sense to maintain a 4.6 branch if no-one is actually doing that maintainance. Are there more people interested in a maintained Drupal 4.6 in general. 'Being interested' meaning: yes I still run it, and would be happy if its maintained somewhere.
Bèr -- [ Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com ]
Drupal repareert drie lekken, waarvan één kritiek: http://help.sympal.nl/drupal_repareert_drie_lekken_waarvan_een_kritiek
participants (6)
-
Bèr Kessels -
Dries Buytaert -
Fernando Silva -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Konstantin Käfer -
Robert Garrigós Castro