apache / apache/lucene

Backport Bot

Open
#14,496 5 comments 4 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
good first issue type:enhancement
Dominant language
Java
Stars
3.6k
Forks
1.4k
Avg merge
2d 11h
Merged PRs (30d)
88

Description

### Description

Lucene issues stable releases via backporting.

But the backporting is a manual `git cherry-pick` of the committer: maybe they run all tests, maybe some, maybe not.

It would be nice, for the reliability of stable releases, to instead allow the pusher to "label" the PR to indicate a backport. When the PR with such a label is merged, it is backported by a bot: it can e.g. open a backport PR.

With this approach we make it easy, yet also enforce certain safeguards, such as all checks passing.

Currently the PR merges in github are all squash merges, for backporting I think it would cause undue conflicts, change this flow to use ordinary git merge.

Also I'm worried about CHANGES.txt, which is conflict-central, but that can be solved in other ways.

Way down the road:
Maybe we even allow backport to just go in, if all checks pass? or maybe require a different label `trivial-backport` for that. The pusher asked for it. Its just saving time.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

No source files or tests are named; start by examining the GitHub PR merge workflow and the existing release/backport process described in the issue. Done would require an agreed design for label-triggered backport PRs, passing-check safeguards, merge strategy, and handling of CHANGES.txt.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
git, github
Domain
ci-cd, release
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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