On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, at 19:23, Kyle Stanley wrote:
Benjamin, what are you thoughts on usage of the "needs backport to 2.7" label? For most of the PRs I've reviewed I tend to avoid adding it myself, but I've seen it used periodically. It seems to be used rather infrequently (https://github.com/python/cpython/pulls?q=is%3Apr+label%3A%22needs+backport+...), but I'm not entirely clear on when it should be used, particularly for documentation-related PRs.
Also, is there an official date when the label will be removed? Removing the backport label seems to generally be at the discretion of the release manager for that version, but I was curious as to whether it would be removed on the sunset date or prior to then. Without the label, backport PRs can still be opened manually of course, but removing it would probably help to discourage 2.7 backports.
I don't think the 2.7 backport label is currently overused. The 2.7 branch is already is a fairly quiet state. We've had less than 15 commits to 2.7 this month despite there being a week of more than 20 core developers intensely hacking on CPython. The label drives the automated backport tooling. There's no need to impede legitimate 2.7 backports.