gerrit/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotes-2.13.txt
Dave Borowitz 0761fd5ce4 MergeOp: Disallow multiple submit types on a single branch
Submit type rules allow different changes to the same branch to have
different submit types. A main use case for this functionality is
allowing branch-specific rather than project-specific submit types.

However, in theory this also allows a single batch of commits to mix
submit types. MergeOp currently handles this situation by splitting
up open changes on a branch by submit type and running submit types
on each subset in arbitrary order (based on HashMap iteration).

My thesis is that this behavior produces nondeterministic results
that, even if we can justify them as "sane", are likely to be
surprising and/or confusing to the user, and that we are better off
failing fast rather than trying to support this scenario.

In the past, there was a distinct reason for this behavior, which was
that there might be (through no fault of a user) changes in the
submitted state with various submit types. Spinning through the submit
type list and making progress, while perhaps confusing, was probably
better than not making progress at all. But now that the submitted
state is gone, the only way in which multiple changes can be submitted
at once is within a single batch (including parents or by topic), so
this reasoning does not really exist any more.

For one example of confusing behavior, say we have two changes A<-B
based on the branch tip 0, where A is Merge Always and B is Merge If
Necessary. If MergeOp chooses to run Merge Always first, the resulting
history will be:

 0----Ma--Mab
  \-A-/   /
     \-B-/

If, however, MergeOp chooses to run Merge If Necessary first, the
merge sorter will choose the fast-forward resolution for B, resulting
in:

 0--A--B

When Merge Always runs, it will find that A is already merged and do
nothing.

For another example, consider three changes A<-B<-C, where A and C
are Cherry-Pick and B is Merge If Necessary. If MergeOp chooses to
run Cherry-Pick first, it cherry-picks A' and C':

 0--A'--C'

Then merging B fails since it now depends on an out-of-date patch set
of A.

If MergeOp chooses Merge If Necessary first, then B gets chosen as a
fast-forward and C gets cherry-picked on top:

 0--A--B--C'

It is not at all obvious that any one of these solutions is what the
user expects to get, to say nothing of more complicated cases.

Note that I am only about 75% sure of what actually happens in these
scenarios; I might be completely wrong. That just goes to show how
weird this behavior is.

Enforce during validateChangeList that only a single submit type is
present on each branch. This also eliminates one level of looping in
the main integrateIntoHistory logic.

Another possible solution would be in the case of mixed submit types
to run the entire process one change at a time in topological order.
This at least might be easier to reason about, although it would still
not always succeed, for example if a Merge Always change follows a
Cherry-Pick change. But it would introduce considerably more
complexity to rework the loops in MergeOp, all for the questionable
benefit of making it easier for users to get into a confused
situation. Better to just not let them do it at all.

Change-Id: I0cec2a7e3e3625fedbdd621b0c6eca6c4100f232
2015-12-17 13:25:02 -05:00

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Release notes for Gerrit 2.13
=============================
Gerrit 2.13 is now available:
link:https://www.gerritcodereview.com/download/gerrit-2.13.war[
https://www.gerritcodereview.com/download/gerrit-2.13.war]
Important Notes
---------------
TODO
Release Highlights
------------------
* Metrics interface.
New Features
------------
Metrics
~~~~~~~
Metrics about Gerrit's internal state can be sent to external
monitoring systems.
The following metrics are supported:
* HTTP responses
+
TODO details here and in the others
* REST API calls
* SSH sessions
* Caches
* SQL connections
* TODO add more
Plugins can provide implementations of the metrics interface to
report metrics to different monitoring systems. The following
plugins are available:
* JMX
* Graphite
* Elasticsearch
Plugins can also provide metrics. The following metrics are provided
by core plugins:
* Replication
** Replication time
* TODO add more
Changes
~~~~~~~
In order to avoid potentially confusing behavior, when submitting changes in a
batch, submit type rules may not be used to mix submit types on a single branch,
and trying to submit such a batch will fail.
Bug Fixes
---------
TODO
Upgrades
--------
* Upgrade Lucene to 5.3.1