[webkit-gtk] Proposal: API revision period

[Carlos Garcia Campos]

As you all know, we are now following the GNOME release cycle for
WebKitGTK+, see:

http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTKStableReleases

That page mentions the UI freeze, but all freezes have been merged into
The Freeze in the current cycle, see:

http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointThree

Theoretically after The Freeze, the API is frozen and modules shouldn't
add new API nor change the existing one. In our case that menas, that
API additions or changes are not allowed in the stable branch.
Sometimes, there's a very good reason to change or add new API after the
freeze, so that we can break the freeze. Adding new API at the end of
the cycle is always more risky, so we should try to avoid it. Sometimes,
patches adding new API are waiting for a review during the whole release
cycle, and they get reviewed after the freeze, if the patch is important
enough we end up breaking the freeze.

To prevent these situations I propose to add the API revision period to
the cycle. It could be one month before the freeze. The idea is that, at
that point, reviewers make an effort to review all patches with r? that
add new API. That way there's one month to land those patches. To
identify patches adding new API we could add a new keyword to bugzilla
NewAPI or something like that. In GNOME bugzilla we have Target
Milestone field. Another possibility is using a wiki page like we do for
stable releases. The API revision revision period will be announced in
this list to make sure reviewers are aware of it.

I know this won't avoid that we'll have to break the freeze, but I think
it will prevent some cases, specially the ones when there's a patch
waiting for review since the beginning of the release cycle.

Opinions?

-- 
Carlos Garcia Campos
http://pgp.rediris.es:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xF3D322D0EC4582C3
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