MariaDB Quality Development Rules

Those are quality-improving rules that everyone with a write access to the MariaDB repository is expected to follow:

• Respect previews
  • A feature can be pushed into an RC release X.Y.1 only after it was in an earlier preview. Normally, in X.Y.0, but generally any earlier preview will do.
• Tester sign-off for all new features
  • A feature being in the preview is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. It needs to be tested (by a dedicated tester, not a developer) and the tester has to say it’s good enough
  • Testing might discover bugs, that’s normal, they have to be fixed before the feature is pushed (or — at the tester’s discretion — they could be fixed after the push, if they’re minor)
  • For tester’s sake, develop in a dedicated branch with the version and the issue number in the branch name, for example, bb-13.1-MDEV-11111, and let the release master know when it’s ready, so that they could cherry-pick it into a preview.
• Features must not be pushed directly into the GA release bypassing the above
  • Keep an eye on the release schedule (jira.mariadb.org) to know when the next release is due
  • Or simply remember that previews happen in mid-March/mid-June/mid-September/mid-December, innovation releases — in early February, early May, early August, early November, see mariadb-release-model.
• Get your commit reviewed.
  • If you don’t know who would be the best reviewer for your PR, assign whoever github suggests — this person can reassign, if github was wrong
• Don’t push into the red (in buildbot) branch
  • Fix failures first (or make sure they’re fixed)
  • Eventually buildbot will evolve to simply not let you do this
• Blocker issues block a release
  • we don’t release if there’s a Blocker bug open, that’s why they’re called blockers
  • so fix them asap, as your first priority, you don’t want all the users to wait specifically for you
• There’s no penalty for breaking these rules, we hope that everyone wants quality bug-free releases anyway
  • but if there will be serial violators, some kind of a penalty can be introduced later