Blockers in Bugfix-Releases (Re: [Release Planning 3.6] Samba 3.6.6 on May 31 (was May 24)?)

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Tue, 2012-06-05 at 13:46 -0700, Jeremy Allison wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 05, 2012 at 10:43:20PM +0200, Michael Adam wrote:
> > 
> > The only situations which imho justify a change in the
> > release schedule are these two:
> > 
> > 1) There are no bugfixes available at all.
> >    In that case it does of course not makes sense to do a
> >    release.
> > 
> > 2) There is a security bug.
> >    In that case we do a release with only the security fix
> >    not containing any of the piled up bug fixes.
> >    If the security release date is too close to the scheduled
> >    regular release date, so that it can't be done so soon
> >    afterwards, we can defer the regular release for some time.
> > 
> > 
> > Does this make my point of view more clear?
> 
> "There is a security bug". That's the case, really.
> 
> The problem is (as we can readily show :-), is that
> it's not always immediately obvious if something is
> a security bug or not. It can take quite a bit of
> investigation, during which it really isn't safe
> to do a release.
> 
> That's what I meant really.

Why is it unsafe?  Which part of the process cannot be performed in
parallel with normal development?

Of course, we will do a special release with the security fix once
confirmed, but why should it interfere with the release process?

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org