breaking_changes.md

Breaking Changes

This document describes QMK's Breaking Change process. A Breaking Change is any change which modifies how QMK behaves in a way that in incompatible or potentially dangerous. We limit these changes so that users can have confidence that updating their QMK tree will not break their keymaps.

The breaking change period is when we will merge PR's that change QMK in dangerous or unexpected ways. There is a built-in period of testing so we are confident that any problems caused are rare or unable to be predicted.

What has been included in past Breaking Changes?

• 2021 Aug 28
• 2021 May 29
• 2021 Feb 27
• 2020 Nov 28
• 2020 Aug 29
• 2020 May 30
• 2020 Feb 29
• 2019 Aug 30

When is the next Breaking Change?

The next Breaking Change is scheduled for August 28, 2021.

Important Dates

• 2021 Aug 29 - develop is created. Each push to master is subsequently merged to develop
• 2021 Oct 31 - develop closed to new PR's.
• 2021 Oct 31 - Call for testers.
• 2021 Nov 26 - master is locked, no PR's merged.
• 2021 Nov 28 - Merge develop to master.
• 2021 Nov 28 - master is unlocked. PR's can be merged again.

What changes will be included?

To see a list of breaking change candidates you can look at the breaking_change label. New changes might be added between now and when develop is closed, and a PR with that label applied is not guaranteed to be merged.

If you want your breaking change to be included in this round you need to create a PR with the breaking_change label and have it accepted before develop closes. After develop closes no new breaking changes will be accepted.

Criteria for acceptance:

• PR is complete and ready to merge
• PR has a ChangeLog

Checklists

This section documents various processes we use when running the Breaking Changes process.

Creating the develop branch

This happens immediately after the previous develop branch is merged.

• qmk_firmware git commands
  • git checkout master
  • git pull --ff-only
  • git checkout -b develop
  • Edit readme.md
    • Add a big notice at the top that this is a testing branch.
    • Include a link to this document
  • git commit -m 'Branch point for <DATE> Breaking Change'
  • git tag breakpoint_<YYYY>_<MM>_<DD>
  • git tag <next_version> # Prevent the breakpoint tag from confusing version incrementing
  • git push upstream develop
  • git push --tags

4 Weeks Before Merge

• develop is now closed to new PR's, only fixes for current PR's may be merged
• Post call for testers
  • Discord
  • GitHub PR
  • https://reddit.com/r/olkb

1 Week Before Merge

• Announce that master will be closed from <2 Days Before> to
  • Discord
  • GitHub PR
  • https://reddit.com/r/olkb

2 Days Before Merge

• Announce that master is closed for 2 days
  • Discord
  • GitHub PR
  • https://reddit.com/r/olkb

Day Of Merge

• qmk_firmware git commands
  • git checkout develop
  • git pull --ff-only
  • Edit readme.md
    • Remove the notes about develop
  • Roll up the ChangeLog into one file.
  • git commit -m 'Merge point for <DATE> Breaking Change'
  • git push upstream develop
• GitHub Actions
  • Create a PR for develop
  • Turn off 'Automatically delete head branches' for the repository -- confirm with @qmk/directors that it is done before continuing
• qmk_firmware git commands
  • git checkout master
  • git pull --ff-only
  • git merge --no-ff develop
  • git push upstream master

Post-merge operations

• (Optional) update ChibiOS + ChibiOS-Contrib on develop