Should we make it a strict requirement that all backported features have to have the ability to be feature-flagged, and they should be feature-flagged off by default? This will help with the stability of the *backport* branch.
Best, - Francisco On 2025/10/09 15:59:52 Josh McKenzie wrote: > > if we introduce bad bugs a long way into a stable branch, e.g. 5.0.18; > > that's a really bad look for us and I fear will burn operators bad enough > > that we will lose users over it. > I agree with this statement. The nuance is that it wouldn't be on a *stable* > branch, it'd be on a *backport* branch. Now - if we don't think users will > understand the distinction between Stable and Backport, that's a reasonable > conversation to have for sure. Or if we think going from 5.0.X as stable to > 5.0.X as backport would be disruptive and break contract. > > That said, the same requirement of users to understand the distinction would > hold whether our backport branch was 5.0.X or 5.1.X. > > On Thu, Oct 9, 2025, at 11:48 AM, Mick wrote: > > > > > > > If we have multiple private forks running large scale fleets w/backported > > > features, having that same code on the latest GA branch doesn't unduly > > > jeopardize the stability of that branch. > > > > > > I don't agree with this extrapolation, and believe we have already been > > burnt by it. > > > > Having someone run something in their production does not mean it meets our > > GA standard. > > Even fleets of clusters within one company has a homogeneous deployment, > > and often a narrow bound of permitted data models. > > > > It certainly heaps, and can be critically unique feedback in helping us get > > to GA, but it is certainly not alone universal, and that does matter for > > our stable branches and the trillions of possible combinations of > > configurations and data models operators can find themselves with. > > > > I want to repeat my earlier statement: if we introduce bad bugs a long way > > into a stable branch, e.g. 5.0.18; that's a really bad look for us and I > > fear will burn operators bad enough that we will lose users over it. > > > > It might be more constructive at this point to go through the examples of > > what folk are now running in production in down-streams and are they > > initial candidates for back-porting. >
