Re: ROCm branches and versions (Was: ROCm packaging session memo)

[Cordell Bloor <cgmb-deb@slerp.xyz>]

On 2022-01-27 13:15, Étienne Mollier wrote:

>  [comgr's] amd-stg-open [branch] is the tip of the public
>  part of the development. The version is not entirely clear yet, but would
>  likely be whatever ROCm 5.1 becomes, which will surely depend on llvm-14.
>

That reminds me. I should probably explain what the various branches mean on the public repositories for the ROCm math and communication libraries (rocBLAS, hipBLAS, rocFFT, etc.). On those repositories, you will find a number of standard branches:

• develop: This is the branch where new features are added. Right now, this is the branch where changes targeting ROCm 5.2 are going.
  
• staging: After some testing, changes are promoted from develop to staging. Changes in this branch are for the same release as develop (whatever that may be at the time).
• master: This is the stable or 'mainline' branch. Right now, this is where changes for ROCm 5.1 are going. It will remain that way until a release branch for 5.1 is created, then staging will be promoted to mainline.
  
• release/rocm-rel-5.0: This was the release branch for ROCm 5.0. The tip of this branch is what was tagged as the rocm-5.0.0 release. Release branches are created based on mainline in the weeks leading up to release.
  

Of course, everything is subject to change until a release is actually made. There's no guarantee that changes in develop, staging or master will end up in a particular release.

Other parts of the ROCm stack use different branching schemes. I'm not as familiar with them, unfortunately. I think the process is mostly the same, but the branches may have different names and not all of them are public.

Sincerely,
Cory Bloor