Merging & Patching
If you have a patch to the master branch (e.g. an important bug fix) that needs to be merged into one of the production V8 branches, read on.
For the examples, a branched 2.4 version of V8 will be used. Substitute "2.4" with your version number. See [Release Process](Release Process) for more information about version numbers.
An associated issue on Chromium's or V8's issue tracker is mandatory if a patch is merged. This helps with keeping track of merges. You can use a template to create an issue.
- The patch fixes a severe bug (order of importance)
- Security bug
- Stability bug
- Correctness bug
- Performance bug
- The patch does not alter APIs
- The patch does not change behavior present before branch cut (except the behavior change fixes a bug)
More information can be found on the relevant Chromium page. When in doubt, send an email to hablich@chromium.org.
The merge process in the Chromium and V8 tracker is driven by labels in the form of
Merge-[Status]-[Branch]
The currently important labels for V8 are:
- Merge-Request-$BRANCHNUMBER$ initiates the process => This fix should be merged into #.#
- Merge-Review-$BRANCHNUMBER$ The merge is not approved yet for #.# e.g. because Canary coverage is missing
- Merge-Approved-$BRANCHNUMBER$ => Simply means that the Chrome TPM are signing the merge off
- Merge-Merged-$BRANCHNUMBER$ => When the merge is done the Merge-Approved label is swapped with this one.
$BRANCHNUMBER$ is the name/number of the V8 branch e.g. 4.3 for M-43.
Use mergeinfo.py to get all the commits which are connected to the HASH according to Git.
tools/release/mergeinfo.py HASH
If it tells you Is on Canary: No Canary coverage
you should not merge yet because the fix was not yet deployed on a Canary build. A good rule of the thump is to wait at least 3 days after the fix landed until the merge is conducted.
Let's assume you're merging revision af3cf11 to branch 2.4 (please specify full git hashes - abbreviations are used here for simplicity).
tools/release/merge_to_branch.py --branch 2.4 af3cf11
Run the script with '-h' to display its help message, which includes more options (e.g. you can specify a file containing your patch, or you can reverse a patch, specify a custom commit message, or resume a merging process you've canceled before). Note that the script will use a temporary checkout of v8 - it won't touch your work space. You can also merge more than one revision at once, just list them all.
tools/release/merge_to_branch.py --branch 2.4 af3cf11 cf33f1b sf3cf09
Step 2: Observe the [branch waterfall] (https://build.chromium.org/p/client.v8.branches/console)
If one of the builders is not green after handling your patch, revert the merge immediately. A bot (AutoTagBot) will take care of the correct versioning after a 10 minutes wait time.
When two people are merging at the same time a race-condition can happen in the merge scripts. If this is the case, contact machenbach@chromium.org and hablich@chromium.org.
- Create issue on issue tracker
- Check status of the fix with
tools/release/mergeinfo.py
- Add Merge-Request-{Branch} to the issue
- Wait until somebody will add Merge-Approved-{Branch}
- Merge
- Building V8 from source
- Contributing
- Debugging
- Embedding V8
- Under the hood
- Writing optimizable JavaScript