Platform Version Versus Joomla Version + Git

[Thomas PAPIN]

Hello,

I am trying to understand how the maintenance of the platform is performed on GIT.
Currently Joomla 2.5 is using 11.4 and Joomla 3.0 is using 12.1.

Will Joomla 2.5 always used 11.X, or is it possible that 2.5 will used 12.X version ?

If we found an issue on Joomla 2.5 (11.4), how to submit a pull request, on the staging branch on joomla platform repository based on 11.X ?

For my understanding, there are only 2 branches, master and staging. Both contains the 12.X version, 11.X is only accessible via a tag. there is no branch 11.X. so how to submit a pull request on 11.X platform ?

I was thinking to found 2 branches, master-12 and master-11, to be able to work on the two versions of the platform

Regards,

Thomas

[Elin Waring]

If you need something in an older version of the the platform fixed and that fix does not apply in the current version (say because something deprecated has been removed) you need to submit a fix to the downstream application that is using that version (of which CMS 2.5 is an example).  Note that the CMS will only take a bug fix not a new feature since 2.5 is a LTS release.

If you need a fix to an older version that would also apply to the current version send a pull request  to the current platform and put it in the CMS tracker with a link and say that it is needed in 2.5 as well as trunk (and explain why it is a bug fix not a feature).   You'll need to make a separate pull request for the fix against the CMS 2.5 branch. 

As you can see by both trackers both projects are failing to keep up with bug fixes and improvements for their current trunks and for the CMS folks maintaining 2 branches (technically 3 really right now) is incredibly challenging. It's hard to overestimate the amount of time and energy that takes. 

The platform also doesn't have a triaging/prioritizing/testing/code review process the way the CMS does (but it has automated tests which are a big advantage, they just can't do the other pieces) which means the people who do serious code review are also doing user error issue closing and requests for information which is time consuming and why issues without code are essentially meaningless to submit on the platform but not on the CMS.  

So it just does not make practical sense to have two platform releases under maintenance since it would only make these things worse than they are already.  

Elin

[Thomas PAPIN]

Thanks