Greg Ward <gward@python.net> writes:
Has anyone taken the time to sit down and document the development process surrounding release and maintenance branches?
You mean PEP 6 and PEP 102?
Maintenance branches are for bug fixes <em>only</em>;
This question is heavily debated. Alex Martelli, for example, favours a policy where new (in a strict sense) features are acceptable if they don't break anything, and are "minor", in some sense.
maintaining backwards compatibility at every level is imperative. (In particular, all extension modules and bytecode for Python 2.<em>x</em>.<em>y</em> must continue to work with Python 2.<em>x</em>.<em>y+1</em> -- binary compatibility in the C API and bytecode must be maintained.)</p>
Even that requirement got dropped at one time, on grounds of the specific API being irrelevant for all practical applications.
<p>Any Python developer may checkin bug fixes on a maintenance branch; it is the release manager's responsibility to create the maintenance branch after releasing a new major Python version.</p>
The typical guidelines apply: If in doubt, post to SF. Regards, Martin