qmk/docs/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.

This also includes any keyboard moves within the repository.

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?

• 2022 May 28
• 2022 Feb 26
• 2021 Nov 27
• 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 27, 2022.

Important Dates

• 2022 May 28 - develop is tagged with a new release version. Each push to master is subsequently merged to develop by GitHub actions.
• 2022 Jul 31 - develop closed to new PR's.
• 2022 Jul 31 - Call for testers.
• 2022 Aug 13 - Last day for merges -- after this point develop is locked for testing and accepts only bugfixes
• 2022 Aug 25 - master is locked, no PR's merged.
• 2022 Aug 27 - Merge develop to master.
• 2022 Aug 27 - 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:

• The PR is complete and ready to merge
• The PR has a ChangeLog file describing the changes under <qmk_firmware>/docs/Changelog/20220827.
  • This should be in Markdown format, with a name in the format PR12345.md, substituting the digits for your PR's ID.
  • One strong recommendation that the ChangeLog document matches the PR description on GitHub, so as to ensure traceability.

Checklists

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

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

2 Weeks Before Merge

• develop is now closed to existing PR merges, only bugfixes for previous merges may be included
• 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 tag <next_version> # Prevent the breakpoint tag from confusing version incrementing
  • git push upstream <next_version>
  • git push upstream master

Post-merge operations

Updating the develop branch

This happens immediately after the previous develop branch is merged to master.

• qmk_firmware git commands

  • git checkout master
  • git pull --ff-only
  • git checkout develop
  • git pull --ff-only
  • git merge --no-ff master
  • 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 push upstream breakpoint_<YYYY>_<MM>_<DD>

• All submodules under lib now need to be checked against their QMK-based forks:

  • git submodule foreach git log -n1
  • Validate each submodule SHA1 matches the qmk fork, e.g. for ChibiOS:
    • Go to qmk/ChibiOS
    • Compare the commit hash in the above output to the commit hash in the repository
    • If there's a mismatch:
      • cd lib/chibios
      • git fetch --all
      • git checkout master
      • git reset --hard <commit hash>
      • git push origin master --force-with-lease

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