Paolo Bonzini [off-list ref] writes:
Question: how are topic branches managed in git.git? In particular, how
are "graduations to master" done? Do you cherry-pick the merge commit
that went into "next"?
Topics meant for master are always forked at the tip of master (or older)
and they are merged back to master when they prove Ok.
Topics that are fixes are forked at maint (or older) and if they are
trivial they are merged straight to maint and gets merged up to master.
Otherwise they are merged to next, cooked for a while, then merged to
master, cooked even more, and then finally merged to maint.
Of course, I am not perfect (I said I am not Linus, didn't I?) and do not
have perfect foresight, so sometimes I do a fix directly on 'master' and
realize it should also apply to 'maint' some time later. They need to be
cherry-picked.