[drupal-devel] How are patches to branches handled?

[Gabor Hojtsy]

>>So what is the point of Scott and Goba (as examples, not to pick on
>>anyone), fixing something in 4.5?
> 
> I fixed the 4.5 branch rather than HEAD because, at present, I'm using a mix
> of 4.4 and 4.5 on my sites, and I'm developing for 4.5 at work. I know 4.6 is
> soon to be released, but my production sites won't upgrade immediately and
> will stay with 4.5 for a month or two. I don't yet have a HEAD test site
> running to play with, and don't have time right now to create it.
> 
> (I know you weren't intending to pick on me, K.B., but you asked a reasonable
> question and I felt it deserved an answer.)
> 
> Sorry my question stirred up this hornet's nest. I wasn't aware that the release
> process for a contributed module was that complicated, and I just assumed that
> I had done something wrong in my CVS commit. I didn't know that "project" was
> a downstream gatekeeper as well. Now I do, so no problem. :-)

Don't be afraid, other contrib module maintainers often do such changes 
in their modules on previous branches. Mostly bugfixes on old branches, 
and feature improvements on the active branch (oftentimes not HEAD), 
because they have that stable version to work with, just like you.

Goba