neovim/MAINTAIN.md

Maintaining the Neovim project
==============================

Notes on maintaining the Neovim project.

General guidelines
------------------

* Decide by cost-benefit
* Write down what was decided
* Constraints are good
* Use automation to solve problems
* Never break the API... but sometimes break the UI

Issue triage
------------

In practice we haven't found a way to forecast more precisely than "next" and
"after next". So there are usually one or two (at most) planned milestones:

* Next bugfix-release (1.0.x)
* Next feature-release (1.x.0)

The forecasting problem might be solved with an explicit priority system (like
Bram's todo.txt). Meanwhile the Neovim priority system is defined by:

* PRs nearing completion.
* Issue labels. E.g. the `+plan` label increases the ticket's priority merely
  for having a plan written down: it is _closer to completion_ than tickets
  without a plan.
* Comment activity or new information.

Anything that isn't in the next milestone, and doesn't have a finished PR—is
just not something you care very much about, by construction. Post-release you
can review open issues, but chances are your next milestone is already getting
full... :)

Release policy
--------------

Release "often", but not "early".

The (unreleased) `master` branch is the "early" channel; it should not be
released if it's not stable. High-risk changes may be merged to `master` if
the next release is not imminent.

For maintenance releases, create a `release-x.y` branch. If the current release
has a major bug:

1. Fix the bug on `master`.
2. Cherry-pick the fix to `release-x.y`.
3. Cut a release from `release-x.y`.
    * Run `./scripts/release.sh`
    * Update (force-push) the remote `stable` tag.
    * The [CI job](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/3d45706478cd030c3ee05b4f336164bb96138095/.github/workflows/release.yml#L11-L13)
      will update the release assets and force-push to the `stable` tag.

### Release automation

Neovim automation includes a [backport bot](https://github.com/zeebe-io/backport-action).
Trigger the action by labeling a PR with `backport release-X.Y`. See `.github/workflows/backport.yml`.

Third-party dependencies
------------------------

These "bundled" dependencies can be updated by bumping their versions in `cmake.deps/CMakeLists.txt`.
Some can be auto-bumped by `scripts/bump_deps.lua`.

* [LuaJIT](https://github.com/LuaJIT/LuaJIT)
* [Lua](https://www.lua.org/download.html)
* [Luv](https://github.com/luvit/luv)
    * When bumping, also sync [our bundled documentation](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/master/runtime/doc/luvref.txt) with [the upstream documentation](https://github.com/luvit/luv/blob/master/docs.md).
* [gettext](https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gettext/)
* [libiconv](https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv)
* [libtermkey](https://github.com/neovim/libtermkey)
* [libuv](https://github.com/libuv/libuv)
* [libvterm](http://www.leonerd.org.uk/code/libvterm/)
* [lua-compat](https://github.com/keplerproject/lua-compat-5.3)
* [msys2](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages) (for mingw Windows build)
    * Changes to mingw can [break our mingw build](https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/issues/9946).
* [tree-sitter](https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter)
* [unibilium](https://github.com/neovim/unibilium)

### Vendored dependencies

These dependencies are "vendored" (inlined), we must update the sources manually:

* `src/mpack/`: [libmpack](https://github.com/libmpack/libmpack)
    * send improvements upstream!
* `src/xdiff/`: [xdiff](https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/xdiff)
* `src/cjson/`: [lua-cjson](https://github.com/openresty/lua-cjson)
* `src/nvim/lib/`: [Klib](https://github.com/attractivechaos/klib)
* `runtime/lua/vim/inspect.lua`: [inspect.lua](https://github.com/kikito/inspect.lua)
* `src/nvim/tui/terminfo_defs.h`: terminfo definitions
    * Run `scripts/update_terminfo.sh` to update these definitions.
* [treesitter parsers](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/blob/fcc24e43e0b5f9d801a01ff2b8f78ce8c16dd551/cmake.deps/CMakeLists.txt#L197-L210)

### Forks

We may maintain forks, if we are waiting on upstream changes: https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Deps

CI
--------------

### General

As our CI is primarily dependent on GitHub Actions at the moment, then so will
our CI strategy be. The following guidelines have worked well for us so far:

* Never use a macOS runner if an Ubuntu or a Windows runner can be used
  instead. This is because macOS runners have a [tighter restrictions on the
  number of concurrent jobs](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/learn-github-actions/usage-limits-billing-and-administration#usage-limits).

### Runner versions

* For special-purpose jobs where the runner version doesn't really matter,
  prefer `-latest` tags so we don't need to manually bump the versions. An
  example of a special-purpose workflow is `labeler.yml`.

* For our testing jobs, which is currently only `ci.yml`, prefer to use the
  latest stable (i.e. non-beta) version explicitly. Avoid using the `-latest`
  tags here as it makes it difficult to determine from an unrelated PR if a
  failure is due to the PR itself or due to GitHub bumping the `-latest` tag
  without our knowledge. There's also a high risk that automatic bumping the CI
  versions will fail due to manual work being required from experience.

* For our release job, which is `release.yml`, prefer to use the oldest stable
  (i.e. non-deprecated) versions available. The reason is that we're trying to
  produce images that work in the broadest number of environments, and
  therefore want to use older releases.

See also
--------

* https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/862
* https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/howto/maintain-git.txt