-The stable-release manager is also given broad discretion in rejecting patches
-that have been nominated for the stable branch. The most basic rule is that
-the stable branch is for bug fixes only, (no new features, no
-regressions). Here is a non-exhaustive list of some reasons that a patch may
-be rejected:
-
-<ul>
- <li>Patch introduces a regression. Any reported build breakage or other
- regression caused by a particular patch, (game no longer work, piglit test
- changes from PASS to FAIL), is justification for rejecting a patch.</li>
-
- <li>Patch is too large, (say, larger than 100 lines)</li>
-
- <li>Patch is not a fix. For example, a commit that moves code around with no
- functional change should be rejected.</li>
-
- <li>Patch fix is not clearly described. For example, a commit message
- of only a single line, no description of the bug, no mention of bugzilla,
- etc.</li>
-
- <li>Patch has not obviously been reviewed, For example, the commit message
- has no Reviewed-by, Signed-off-by, nor Tested-by tags from anyone but the
- author.</li>
-
- <li>Patch has not already been merged to the master branch. As a rule, bug
- fixes should never be applied first to a stable branch. Patches should land
- first on the master branch and then be cherry-picked to a stable
- branch. (This is to avoid future releases causing regressions if the patch
- is not also applied to master.) The only things that might look like
- exceptions would be backports of patches from master that happen to look
- significantly different.</li>
-
- <li>Patch depends on too many other patches. Ideally, all stable-branch
- patches should be self-contained. It sometimes occurs that a single, logical
- bug-fix occurs as two separate patches on master, (such as an original
- patch, then a subsequent fix-up to that patch). In such a case, these two
- patches should be squashed into a single, self-contained patch for the
- stable branch. (Of course, if the squashing makes the patch too large, then
- that could be a reason to reject the patch.)</li>
-
- <li>Patch includes new feature development, not bug fixes. New OpenGL
- features, extensions, etc. should be applied to Mesa master and included in
- the next major release. Stable releases are intended only for bug fixes.
-
- Note: As an exception to this rule, the stable-release manager may accept
- hardware-enabling "features". For example, backports of new code to support
- a newly-developed hardware product can be accepted if they can be reasonably
- determined to not have effects on other hardware.</li>
-
- <li>Patch is a performance optimization. As a rule, performance patches are
- not candidates for the stable branch. The only exception might be a case
- where an application's performance was recently severely impacted so as to
- become unusable. The fix for this performance regression could then be
- considered for a stable branch. The optimization must also be
- non-controversial and the patches still need to meet the other criteria of
- being simple and self-contained</li>
-
- <li>Patch introduces a new failure mode (such as an assert). While the new
- assert might technically be correct, for example to make Mesa more
- conformant, this is not the kind of "bug fix" we want in a stable
- release. The potential problem here is that an OpenGL program that was
- previously working, (even if technically non-compliant with the
- specification), could stop working after this patch. So that would be a
- regression that is unacceptable for the stable branch.</li>
-</ul>