[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Proposed XUL bugfix merge policy for 3.0 and beyond

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

Following the discussion during the development meeting today, here's
a draft of a policy on merging XUL bugfixes once 3.0 is released, in
conjunction with the planned deprecation of the XUL staff client:

---- START ----
Starting with the release of 3.0.0, patches that fix XUL bugs will not
be merged into master or backported unless they meet one or more of
the following conditions:

(a) the bug is a security issue
(b) the bug involves the destruction of data
(c) the bug is a regression of functionality in the XUL staff client
introduced by other work done to Evergreen

Under no circumstances will XUL staff client feature enhancements be merged.

This policy will continue through the 3.0.x and 3.1.x maintenance
release cycles, and will become moot upon the release of 3.2.0, when
the XUL staff client is slated to be entirely removed.
--- END ---

One goal of a policy like this is to minimize scarce developer time
spent on fixing XUL issues in favor of having that time spent on
improving the web staff client. A secondary goal is to encourage
Evergreen sites to upgrade to 3.0 or 3.1 as soon as they can.

An implication of this, particularly if we adhere to a strict
interpretation of this policy (as I recommend we do) is that any XUL
client bugs on Launchpad that don't meet any of those criteria would
have their status changed to "won't fix". A further implication is
that if you want to get a particular XUL-only bugfix into Evergreen,
you have until the 3.0.0 release candidate is cut on 27 September to
get it in.

Of course, a strict interpretation of this policy presumes that
showstopper issues with the web staff client are addressed by 3.0.0,
or at least early in the 3.0.x maintenance release cycle.

Your feedback is requested. I am intentionally circulating this to
open-ils-dev first, but will subsequently make a broader announcement
once we have achieved consensus here.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Infrastructure and Added Services Manager
Equinox Open Library Initiative
phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
email:  gmc at equinoxInitiative.org
web:  https://equinoxInitiative.org
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366