Instructions to back-merge release branches into master

build/mark-new-version.sh

@@ -122,11 +122,37 @@ echo "       or find someone who can help solve the tag problem!"
 echo ""
 
 if [[ "${VERSION_PATCH}" == "0" ]]; then
-  echo "- Submit branch: ${current_branch} as a PR to master"
+  echo "- Send branch: ${current_branch} as a PR to master"
   echo "- Get someone to review and merge that PR"
   echo "- Push the new release branch"
   echo "   git push git@github.com:GoogleCloudPlatform/kubernetes.git ${current_branch}:${release_branch}"
 else
-  echo "- Submit branch: ${current_branch} as a PR to ${release_branch}"
+  echo "- Send branch: ${current_branch} as a PR to ${release_branch}"
   echo "- Get someone to review and merge that PR"
+  echo ""
+  echo "Now you need to back merge the release branch into master. This should"
+  echo "only be done if you are committing to the latest release branch. If the"
+  echo "latest release branch is, for example, release-0.10 and you are adding"
+  echo "a commit to release-0.9, you may skip the remaining instructions"
+  echo ""
+  echo "We do this back merge so that master will always show the latest version."
+  echo "The version in master would, for exampe show v0.10.2+ instead of v0.10.0+"
+  echo "It is not enough to just edit the version file in pkg/version/base.go in a"
+  echo "seperate PR. Doing it this way means that git will see the tag you just"
+  echo "pushed as an ancestor of master, even though the tag is on on a release"
+  echo "branch. The tag will thus be found by tools like git describe"
+  echo ""
+  echo "- Update so you see that merge in origin"
+  echo "   git remote update"
+  echo "- Create and check out a new branch based on master"
+  echo "   git checkout -b merge-${release_branch}-to-master origin/master"
+  echo "- Merge the ${release_branch} into your merge-${release_branch}-to-master branch"
+  echo "   git merge ${release_branch}"
+  echo "   - It's possible you have merge conflicts."
+  echo "     - You will almost always want to take what is in HEAD"
+  echo "   - If you are not SURE how to solve these correctly, ask for help."
+  echo "   - It is possible to break other people's work if you didn't understand why"
+  echo "     the conflict happened and the correct way to solve it."
+  echo "- Send merge-${release_branch}-to-master as a PR to master"
+  echo "- Take the afternoon off"
 fi