[openssl-project] Release strategy updates & other policies

[Richard Levitte]

In message <896ece72-8923-801e-b97d-5a1b21c9c815 at openssl.org> on Tue, 25 Sep 2018 13:37:45 +0100, Matt Caswell <matt at openssl.org> said:

> > And that is what semantic versioning is about - it is about the API.
> > So if you add to the API you change either MINOR or MAJOR.
> > In your scenario the moment you need to add an API you are doing a MINOR
> > release and if you already have a MINOR release under the MAJOR then you
> > need to add a MINOR on top of the latest MINOR that you have.
> > You don't get to make API changing releases that expand the API behind
> > the existing releases that are out there.
> 
> Exactly. That is why I am proposing that each time we create a branch it
> is associated with a major release ONLY. You can't have two branches
> with the same major release because that means you cannot make MINOR
> changes on the older branch - even ones that we would historically have
> allowed.

Hmmmm?  If we have three major branches 5.0.0, 6.0.0 and 7.0.0, I
don't quite see what would stop us, technically.

    5.0.0
    5.0.1
    5.1.0
    5.1.1
           6.0.0        (new branch)
           6.0.1
           6.0.2
                  7.0.0 (new branch)
           6.0.3
           6.1.0
    5.1.2
                  7.0.1
                  7.1.0
    5.2.0
           6.1.2
           6.2.0

Nothing in major based branching stops this from happening.  The only
thing you stop is new patches on the next to last minor release in any
given branch.

Cheers,
Richard

-- 
Richard Levitte         levitte at openssl.org
OpenSSL Project         http://www.openssl.org/~levitte/