Improve cherry-pick process to better track them

[apelisse]

Cherry-picks are hard to track. We don't know if they've been merged or not and where.

In order to improve this process, we want to add two new features to prow:

• Create a new command, maybe /cherry-pick $release, to automatically create a new issue (or PR) for that specific release. The goal is to have something we can track so that we don't forget it.
• Automatically write a comment describing the process above once the cherrypick-candidate and cherrypick-approved labels have been applied.

[grodrigues3]

cc @mwielgus

[mwielgus]

cc: @saad-ali

[apelisse]

cc @spxtr

[spxtr]

Sounds good to me. Both should be fairly straightforward prow commands, and I'd love to review the PRs.

The second will be easiest to start with.

[saad-ali]

This would make cherry picks even easier! And if there is a conflict /cherry-pick $release should post a comment on the original PR saying the author will have to manually create a cherry pick (using hack/cherry...) because of conflict.

[zmerlynn]

How is it broken? http://cherrypick.k8s.io is easy enough to use.

[fejta]

Does anyone know about this site? I sure didn't! Maybe update the comment to link to it?

[0xmichalis]

There is an external prow plugin that can be used to automate cherrypicks between master and release branches today: https://github.com/kubernetes/test-infra/tree/master/experiment/cherrypicker

[fejta-bot]

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/lifecycle stale

[justaugustus]

/remove-lifecycle stale

[stevekuznetsov]

Should be much much easier with the cherry-picker robot

[spiffxp]

I think the open question is what labels if any should be used in conjunction with the cherrypicker bot to make a release branch manager's life easier

[spiffxp]

Other cherry pick improvement links:

• Members should be able to add cherrypick-candidate label to PRs #7332 - members should be able to add cherrypick-candidate label to PR's (I think the cherrypick bot obviates this?)
• Move cherry picking functionality over to Prow #7345 - move cherrypicker experiment to prow external plugin
• Add cherrypicker to prow deployment bundle #7393 - deploy cherrypicker external plugin as part of prow
• How to cherry pick a fix to multiple release branches? community#994 - cherry picking to multiple release branches
• prow: cherrypicker: add a milestone to cherry-pick PRs #6908 - add milestones to cherrypicked PRs
• Other unanswered questions in cherry-picks.md community#1894 - docs are confusing...
• clarify some parts of the cherry pick process community#1980 - ...so trying to clarify them
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/kubernetes-sig-contribex/XxYn02YQcV0 - @liggitt proposing changes to the cherrypick process to make it easier to track what has and hasn't been cherrypicked to which branches

[fejta-bot]

Issues go stale after 90d of inactivity.
Mark the issue as fresh with /remove-lifecycle stale.
Stale issues rot after an additional 30d of inactivity and eventually close.

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/lifecycle stale

[spiffxp]

/remove-lifecycle stale
/milestone clear

[spiffxp]

More cherry pick improvement ideas:

• Cherrypick PRs Shouldn't Require Approval #1828 - auto-approve cherrypick PR's if they're based off of approved PR's to master (ed: I'm not sure I like this idea, but I'm linking it)
• Stop using the cherrypick-auto-approve munger for k/k #7653 - during v1.11 we disabled the cherrypick-auto-approve munger because it was confusing branch managers
• prow: cherrypicker: allow enumerating branches in one comment #8691 - allow multiple branches from one /cherrypick command, or multiple /cherrypick commands in one comment

[spiffxp]

Came up during today's sig-contribex meeting that cherry-picking can be foreign to new contributors, due to a lack of awareness about our branch release lifecycle. One thing we could do to help would be to have the automation responsible for posting the do-not-merge/cherry-pick-not-approved comment with a brief description that links to the patch release manager role in sig-release, and/or the table of current/previous release branch and patch release managers. I think this automation is in mungegithub, it would be great to see this migrated to a prow plugin. cc @guineveresaenger

[spiffxp]

/lifecycle frozen
I'm freezing this as "yes we know cherry picking needs help"

[nikhita]

Related: #9582.

Removing the help-wanted label because we still need consensus on how to proceed with overhauling cherrypicking.
/remove-help

/sig contributor-experience

[spiffxp]

/remove-lifecycle frozen
I'm taking no action on this in ~2 years as a sign that it's no longer that important

[fejta-bot]

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/lifecycle stale

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/lifecycle rotten

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/close

[k8s-ci-robot]

@fejta-bot: Closing this issue.

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