Branching Model

Pulp lives on GitHub. The “pulp” repository is for the platform, and then each supported content family (like “rpm” and “puppet”) has its own repository.

Pulp uses a version scheme x.y.z. Pulp’s branching strategy is designed for bugfix development on the 2-master branch with cherry-picking fixes into x.y streams as necessary. This version scheme is based on the Semantic Versioning strategy.

Note

For additional information on Pulp’s branching strategy decision, please refer to PUP-0003

2-master

This is the latest bleeding-edge code. All work should be done out of this branch.

Version-Specific Branches

Each x.y release will have one corresponding branch called x.y-release. Fixes are cherry-picked back to these branches for each x.y.z release.

Protected Branches

Within each repository, the master branch, and any branch ending in -release should be marked as protected on GitHub. The basic protection that disallows force-push and deletion is the only option that should be enabled. There should be no restrictions on required status checks or who can push. There is a script at devel/scripts/protected-branches.py that will mark all appropriate branches as protected. Any time new branches are created that should be protected, that script can be run to do the work.

Build Tags

Builds will be represented only as tags.

Note

In the past, the latest beta and GA release of an x.y stream would be represented additionally by branches, but that is no longer the case as of pulp 2.7.

Build Lifecycle

Alpha and Beta releases will be built from the tip of an x.y-release branch. If the beta fails testing, blocking issues will have fixes merged to the 2-master branch and picked back to the x.y-release branch like any other bug fix, and then a new build will be made.

Release candidates will be built from the most recent beta tag. GA releases will be built from the most recent release candidate tag.

Hotfix

When a hotfix needs to be made. The fix will be made (via pull request from a personal fork to the x.y-release branch), a new tag will be built from the tip of the branch, and the fix can be cherry-picked forward with a pull request to 2-master.

Bug Fix Branches

When creating a Pull Request (PR) that fixes a specific bug, title the PR as you would a git commit message with a short, human-readable description. Bug fixes should always be made against the 2-master branch.

Feature Branches

Similar to bug fix branches, the name of a feature branch and its associated Pull Request should be a short, human-readable description of the feature being added. For example, a branch to add persistent named searches might be named feature/named-searches. New features should go into the 2-master branch.

Choosing an Upstream Branch

When creating a bug fix or feature branch, it is very important to choose the right upstream branch. The general rule is to always choose the 2-master branch. For more info see above Feature Branches or Bug Fix Branches.

Naming of the new Branch

It is advised to use the number of your issue or story when you are creating your new branch name. Some examples of naming:

  • Issue #2524 - Vagrant enviroment is not starting properly => 2524-vagrant-init-fix

  • Story #2523 - Implement regex upload of packages => 2523-regex-upload

Commit Messages

Commit messages in Pulp should contain a human readable explanation of what was fixed in the commit. They should also follow the standard git message format of starting with a subject line or title (usually wrapped at about 50 chars) and optionally, a longer message (usually wrapped at 72 characters) broken up into paragraphs. For more on what constitutes a good commit message, we recommend Tim Pope’s blog post on the subject.

It’s also recommended that every commit message in Pulp reference an issue in Pulp’s Redmine issue tracker. To do this you should use both a keyword and a link to the issue.

To reference the issue (but not change its state), use re or ref:

re #123
ref #123

To update the issue’s state to MODIFIED and set the %done to 100, use fixes or closes:

fixes #123
closes #123

You can also reference multiple issues in a commit:

fixes #123, #124

Putting this altogether, the following is an example of a good commit message:

Update node install and quickstart

The nodes install and quickstart was leaving out an important step on
the child node to configure the server.conf on the child node.

closes #1392
https://pulp.plan.io/issues/1392

Note

In case you have multiple commits use re or ref in all of them and fixes or close only in the last one to avoid closing the issue before it’s completely done.

Rebasing

Don’t do it! Seriously though, this should not happen between release branches. It is a good idea (but not required) for a developer to rebase his or her development branch before merging a pull request.

Note

If you are not sure what “rebasing” means, Pro Git by Scott Chacon is an excellent resource for learning about git, including advanced topics such as these.