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TRACKING POLICY

This document formalizes the source tracking and release management strategy for kde-build-meta.

1. Tracking Model: Rolling Master (Option A)​

kde-build-meta maintains upstream KDE Linux alignment by tracking rolling master / development branches across KDE element groups:

  • KDE Frameworks, Plasma, and Applications: Track rolling development sources via daily automated tracking (.github/workflows/track-bst-sources.yml).
  • Rationale: Downstream consumer repositories (such as tunaos) rely on rolling nightly builds for early integration testing, while stability is enforced via downstream promotion gates.

2. Evaluation of Release Tag Tracking (Option B)​

Switching to track: v[0-9]* release tags is currently not adopted due to:

  • Release Candidate Collision: Upstream KDE publishes release candidate tags (e.g. v6.9.0-rc1). Standard git_repo tracking in BuildStream cannot filter out -rc or -beta suffixes natively, which would cause automated tracking to pin pre-release tags.
  • Future Tag-Tracking Prerequisites: Transitioning to release tags in the future will require either an upstream BuildStream exclude-pattern feature or a custom pre-commit tracking step that strips pre-release candidate tags.