7.8 branch is created, HEAD is now open, and a note on merges

[Austin Seipp]

Hello all,

I've just created the 7.8 branch after tying off some of the final loose ends.

In its current state, I expect the branch as it is now to become RC1
within the day. I plan on starting builds for the following soon:

  - OS X 10.7 and OS X 10.9
  - Linux i386/amd64 (likely based on Debian Wheezey)
  - Windows i386/amd64 (many thanks to Kyrill Briantsev for the heroic
last-minute linker fixes!)

I'll send a (GPG-signed) email containing SHA1 hashes when they're done.

Two systems I won't make builds for RC1 by default (but could be
persuaded to if nobody else does, and people want it):

  - Older glibc-2.5 based systems (e.g. CentOS, - a few users have
talked about this wrt binary releases, where I don't think GHC works.)
  - FreeBSD - Pali, if you'd like to do this, feel free, and let me know.

This means I'll (mostly) be waiting around today, so feel free to
shoot questions.

As of now, this means HEAD is now version 7.9, and you're free to push
wacky experiments or changes now, if you've been holding off. You'll
probably want to clean your whole tree, since this means the interface
file versions etc will change.

Finally, we picked up a good amount of new committers this year, so
let's remind people of the merging policy: what happens if you need to
merge something you did to the 7.8 branch? There are two main avenues
for this to happen:

 * Someone reports a bug against the 7.8 RC on Trac. You decide to fix
it and do so. Now what?

    1) Please commit the bug to master, and confirm it's a fix.
    2) Go to the bug, and instead of closing it, change the ticket
status to 'merge'.
    3) I will cherry-pick it over to the 7.8 branch for you - nothing
else needed.

 * There's not a recorded bug, but you do push a change, and you think
it should be merged (maybe a typo or something.) In this case, I'd ask
you please CC me on the email sent to ghc-commits at haskell.org which is
related to your commit, and just say "Please merge" or somesuch. I'll
come over the commits with such a response.

This goes for all changes - submodule updates, typos, real fixes, etc.
It's likely me and Herbert will restrict the Gitolite permissions to
only allow the two of us to touch the ghc-7.8 branch. So it's really
important you put us in the loop, ASAP.

If you don't do one of these two things, it's highly likely I will
miss it, and not merge it. If you have questions, please ask me or
Herbert. If there's a merge conflict, we can discuss it.

Thanks

-- 
Regards,

Austin Seipp, Haskell Consultant
Well-Typed LLP, http://www.well-typed.com/