Moving a Branch Tag And Patching a Branch

The CGIs are built onto hgwbeta every-other Monday night. The QA team tests the new CGIs on hgwbeta. If problems are found, the developer is contacted for a fix to the offending file. It may be necessary to either roll back to a previous version of a file, or to include the developer's new fix in this release of the CGIs. To do either of these, we move the branch tag for the branch release of the CGIs on hgwbeta. If the developer's fix requires skipping one or more versions of the file, then the branch must be patched instead.

Where?

The two directories that are important are:

- the directory where the build is:

  hgwbeta:/data/tmp/releaseBuild/vXYZ_branch

- the directory where the scripts are:

  hgwbeta:/cluster/bin/build/scripts

How? ("Who" in parenthesis)

1. (QA): Find an error in the binaries, determine if it needs to be patched, and alert the Developer.
2. (Developer): Fix the error (and get a second opinion on your fix from another developer). Let the QA person know that it is fixed.
3. (QA): Verify the developer's fix on hgwdev. Send email to Build-meister (cc'ing browser-qa and developer) with revision number of the fix and branch tag move or patch request (including an explanation of the problem and the fix and the CGIs that will be affected).
4. (Build-Meister): Determine whether the branch tag needs to be moved (new and old versions of a file are consecutive) or whether the branch needs to be patched (versions of a file are skipped in order to incorporate the new fix). Check the CVS log in order to determine which needs to be done. If versions of the file need to be skipped, check with the developers that made those changes and with QA to see if they are minor changes that could also be incorporated in which case the branch tag could still be moved.

To Move a Branch Tag, follow the process on this page or to Patch a Branch, follow the process on this page.