Submitting patches
In order to submit a patch, please get a clone the git repository:
git clone https://github.com/xrootd/xrootd.git
Make your changes and commit them:
git add modified_file1.cc modified_file2.cc ...
git commit -m "Commit message"
Create a patch:
git format-patch -1
Send the patch to xrootd-l@slac.stanford.edu.
Releases and release procedure
The release snapshots of current developments will normally be built two times per year. Each ‘master’ release is preceded by one or more release candidates that get tested for bugs and deployment issues in a possibly wide range of environments. When the release candidates are deemed sufficiently stable, then the final release is built.
Additionally to the ‘master’ releases, bugfix releases may be built at when needed. These are for bug fixes only, so they normally should not need release candidates (due to reduced need of testing).
RPM packages are built for each release, including release candidates. All the packages are pushed to the testing yum repository. Additionally, all the bug fix releases and all the final ‘master’ releases are pushed to the stable repository. See the download page for details.
Library versions
When a library evolves compatibly: existing interfaces are preserved, but new ones are added the library’s minor version number must be incremented. Since nothing has been done that would break applications constructed earlier, it is OK for older applications to be linked with the newer library at run-time.
If the interfaces in a library shared object change incompatibly, then the major revision number associated with the library must be incremented. Doing so will cause run-time linking errors for the applictions constructed with the older versions of the library and thus will prevent them from running, as opposed to crashing in an incontrollable way.
More information on library versioning is available here and here.
The project policy is that a change to public interfaces (as defined in the installed headers) requires a major release - bumping the major version number.