Hi Léo, On Fri, 26 Mar 2021 at 21:10, Léo Le Bouter wrote: > For these reasons, I would like to propose a new branch called > security-updates that would be based on master where we queue security > fixes that introduce any arbitrary number of rebuilds without using > grafts. > > We would merge the security-updates branch as soon as there is complete > substitute availability for the branch and it's future merged version > within master. Basically, what you are proposing is more or less staging. The issue is that the cycles are sometimes longer than expected. The cycle is defined as 6 weeks for staging. Is it really 6 weeks? Well, It could be shorter if there is more man power *and* if the build farm is working better. About the man power, it is already a good job. Let plot roughly the number of days between 2 merges between staging and master. --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- $ git log --format="%cd|%s" --date=format:"%Y-%m-%d" --after=2019-01-01 \ | grep Merge | grep staging | grep master \ | cut -d'|' -f1 \ > /tmp/staging.txt --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- then this tiny R script: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- $ cat /tmp/dates.R library("ggplot2") raw <- read.table("/tmp/staging.txt") dat <- raw$V1 dates <- data.frame(start=strptime(dat[1:length(dat)-1], format="%Y-%m-%d"), end=strptime(dat[2:length(dat)], format="%Y-%m-%d")) dates$diff <- difftime(dates$start, dates$end, units="days") p <- ggplot(dates, aes(x=start, y=diff)) + geom_point(color='red') + geom_smooth() ggsave("/tmp/number-of-days-staging-merges.pdf") --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- shows the attached graph. Well, it is variable and the variance and standard deviation should be considered. The mean is less then 8 days. Obviously, I can have done a mistake and this should be taken with grain of salt. My point is: we should root the practise on what we are already doing and see what are the incremental changes to improve. For example, staging is not merged since a couple of months. Why? Because none of us is taking the time to make it. Hard to be close to the oven and in the same to the mill. :-) About the build farm, it is doing better and better. Mathieu introduced some plots [1] and again I think we should explore a bit the data to see what is the average time to build staging, how many packages are built on average, etc. Moreover, priorities have recently been introduced. I do know if we have enough time elapse to see their impacts. They are per branch, IIRC, and maybe we could imagine a priority ’properties’ applied for a package because it is a security update. IIUC, it is not implemented yet. And as I said elsewhere, “to me, security is important. But it's no less important than everything *else* that is also important!“, so personally I am not convinced that security updates deserve a special treatment compared to a regular update. That’s my opinion. :-) That’s said, from my point of view, staging or security-updates are only names but somehow they cover the same idea: update a package with many dependants and provide the substitutes as soon as it is available. The key for a better scaling is, IMHO, to tweak what is going to master, staging and core-updates; as I wrote in [2]. But the real hard part is to collectively make this tough work of merging branches on the long run. Cheers, simon 1: 2: