[LEDE-DEV] Release Preparation Questions

[Hannu Nyman]

I like your release approach in general.

I would prefer to have clear branches like "lede-16.11" for all the repos. 
Tags will not be sufficient when updates are made to the packages after the 
release and people compile new builds. (case for branch arises when a package 
has after a release first a major version bump e.g. 3.2-->4.0 and then a bit 
later a security fix 3.2.1 for the 3.2 in the release.)

And e.g. Openwrt uses nickname & version number confusingly: main firmware 
download is from "chaos_calmer" download directory and source branch, while 
feed source branches are "for-15.05".

Just make sure that you can keep the terminology clear during the discussion. 
I am raising this up now, because include/version.mk logic can be pretty 
confusing and your message leaves some things up.

Jo-Philipp Wich wrote at Sat Nov 19 06:20:07 PST 2016:
 > ... just two arguments: a release number and a code name.
 > ... the version number (or the nickname) alone.
 > ... name it "lede-$version"
 > ... shall have a version number X.Y.Z where X is the year of release, Y 
the month and Z the build number produced by buildbot
 > ... 
http://downloads.lede-project.org/$version/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/$buildno

Based on the above quotes from your message, I am still not quite sure what 
would be $version.  ("16.11", "Reboot Rabbit" or something else?

The only input for your script are "release number" and "code name",  but 
following sentences contain also "version number", "nickname", "$version". 
And then for images also "version number" like x.y.z and "buildno" z of that 
x.y.z.

I wrote earlier in 
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/lede-dev/2016-May/000271.html that there 
are at least three different kind of branch builds, as people also compile 
from branches (possibly already before the release during rc phase, plus 
after the release):

- branch builds before release: Branch codename designation, release branch 
number is known but no release yet, source commit/revision needed, (no branch 
opkg repo yet, so either no downloads or from snapshot repo if still compatible)

- branch release builds: Branch codename designation, official release 
number, source revision, opkg download from release repo

- branch builds after a release: Branch codename designation, last release 
number known + changes after it, source revision, opkg download from last 
release repo

So please consider that your script produces sensible config values at the 
source repo for all the cases.

Ps. I still hate how config options and include/version.mk mix 
CONFIG_VERSION_NUMBER vs. REVISION/commit, CONFIG_VERSION_NICK option vs. 
hardcoded RELEASE definition, and again CONFIG_VERSION_NUMBER vs. "HEAD" for 
VERSION_CODE.  When looking at the release script, you might also consider if 
the config logic there needs some straightening.