Clarify when changes in master can be merged into the release branch
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ The release shepherd is responsible for the entire release series of a minor rel
* We aim to keep the master branch in a working state at all times. In principle, it should be possible to cut a release from master at any time. In practice, things might not work out as nicely. A few days before the pre-release is scheduled, the shepherd should check the state of master. Following their best judgement, the shepherd should try to expedite bug fixes that are still in progress but should make it into the release. On the other hand, the shepherd may hold back merging last-minute invasive and risky changes that are better suited for the next minor release.
* On the date listed in the table above, the release shepherd cuts the first pre-release (using the suffix `-rc.0`) and creates a new branch called `release-<major>.<minor>` starting at the commit tagged for the pre-release. In general, a pre-release is considered a release candidate (that's what `rc` stands for) and should therefore not contain any known bugs that are planned to be fixed in the final release.
* With the pre-release, the release shepherd is responsible for running and monitoring a benchmark run of the pre-release for 3 days, after which, if successful, the pre-release is promoted to a stable release.
-* If regressions or critical bugs are detected, they need to get fixed in the release branch (and later merged into master) before cutting a new pre-release (called `-rc.1`, `-rc.2`, etc.).
+* If regressions or critical bugs are detected, they need to get fixed before cutting a new pre-release (called `-rc.1`, `-rc.2`, etc.).
See the next section for details on cutting an individual release.
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ We use [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/).
We maintain a separate branch for each minor release, named `release-<major>.<minor>`, e.g. `release-1.1`, `release-2.0`.
-The usual flow is to merge new features and changes into the master branch and to merge bug fixes into the latest release branch. Bug fixes are then merged into master from the latest release branch. The master branch should always contain all commits from the latest release branch. Whether merging master back into a release branch makes more sense is left up to the shepherd's judgement.
+The usual flow is to merge new features and changes into the master branch and to merge bug fixes into the latest release branch. Bug fixes are then merged into master from the latest release branch. The master branch should always contain all commits from the latest release branch. As long as master hasn't deviated from the release branch, new commits can also go to master, followed by merging master back into the release branch.
If a bug fix got accidentally merged into master, cherry-pick commits have to be created in the latest release branch, which then have to be merged back into master. Try to avoid that situation.
