tidb-eol-engineering-efficiency

name

tidb-eol-engineering-efficiency

description

Handle TiDB Engineering Efficiency EOL work for a TiDB minor version across PingCAP-QE/ci and ti-community-infra/configs. Here TiDB means the whole customer-facing TiDB product line, not only pingcap/tidb. Use when retiring release-X.Y support across product components, including patch and hotfix SDLC for vX.Y.Z: delete CI jobs and resources, remove periodic or cron jobs, remove release-X.Y, release-X.Y.Z, hotfix branch, and vX.Y.* ranges, deny affects-X.Y labeling, block merges to release-X.Y* branches, and remove maintained GitHub labels for that EOL version.

TiDB EOL Engineering Efficiency

Scope

This skill is for retiring one TiDB minor version such as 8.5. Here, TiDB means the whole product service composed from multiple component repos, not just pingcap/tidb.

Default repos:

• current repo: PingCAP-QE/ci
• sibling repo: ../../ti-community-infra/configs

Default product scope in PingCAP-QE/ci:

• core database repos: pingcap/tidb, tikv/tikv, tikv/pd
• data service components: pingcap/tiflash, pingcap/tiflow, pingcap/ticdc, pingcap/tidb-binlog
• test and release-adjacent repos: PingCAP-QE/tidb-test, pingcap/tidb-tools, pingcap/monitoring
• docs and delivery repos when they still carry EOL release routing: pingcap/docs, pingcap/docs-cn, related postsubmit sync jobs
• internal mirrors or release-flow repos when present: pingcap-inc/tidb, pingcap-inc/tiflow, similar pingcap-inc/* entries

Default version forms:

• branch: release-X.Y
• patch branch: release-X.Y.Z
• patched branch prefix: release-X.Y.
• dated hotfix branch: release-X.Y-YYYYMMDD-vX.Y.Z
• feature branch prefix: feature/release-X.Y-
• patch feature branch prefix: feature/release-X.Y.Z- and feature_release-X.Y.Z-
• tag/version: vX.Y.*
• labels: affects-X.Y, may-affects-X.Y, needs-cherry-pick-release-X.Y, type/cherry-pick-for-release-X.Y

Workflow

1. Resolve the target version once.
   • Keep minor=X.Y, release_branch=release-X.Y, and minor_compact=XY for names like v85.
   • Treat the whole vX.Y.* family as retired, including patch tags and customer hotfix branches.
2. Start with discovery.
   • Run .agents/skills/tidb-eol-engineering-efficiency/scripts/find_tidb_eol_candidates.sh X.Y.
   • Review the candidate list before deleting anything.
3. Clean PingCAP-QE/ci.
   • Search all release-managed TiDB product components, not only pingcap/tidb.
   • Remove branch-dedicated Prow jobs for the EOL branch across affected component repos.
   • Remove matching Jenkins job DSL and pipeline resources for the EOL branch across affected component repos.
   • Remove periodic or cron Prow jobs tied to the EOL version across the product CI surface.
   • Remove version-specific branch and tag ranges that keep the EOL line active for any TiDB product component.
   • Remove patch and hotfix SDLC support for vX.Y.Z, including:
     • release-X.Y.Z patch branches,
     • release-X.Y-YYYYMMDD-vX.Y.Z hotfix branches,
     • feature/release-X.Y.Z-* and feature_release-X.Y.Z-*,
     • shared regex exclusions or special routing that preserve customer hotfix flows.
   • Run bash .ci/update-prow-job-kustomization.sh after Prow file removals.
4. Clean ti-community-infra/configs.
   • Remove EOL version labels from prow/config/external_plugins_config.yaml for all affected TiDB product repos so users can no longer add them.
   • Remove maintained label definitions for the EOL version from prow/config/labels.yaml.
   • Regenerate prow/config/labels.md.
   • Remove release-X.Y, release-X.Y., and any version-specific patch or hotfix branch entries from the Prow config blocks that still allow merging to that branch family across the product repos.
5. Validate both repos.
   • Re-run targeted rg searches and confirm only intentional historical references remain.
   • Report deleted files, edited policy blocks, and any ambiguous leftovers.

Guardrails

• Delete only TiDB product resources dedicated to the EOL version. Do not touch trunk or still-supported minors.
• If a file serves multiple versions, remove only the EOL entries instead of deleting the whole file.
• Some repos are part of the product scope only indirectly, such as docs sync, monitoring, or QE test repos. Remove EOL routing only when it exists in active release automation.
• Shared library logic and regexes may distinguish between release branches, patch branches, and dated hotfix branches. Remove the EOL-specific support without breaking still-supported minors.
• In ti-community-infra/configs/prow/config/config.yaml, preserve broader branch patterns that still belong to maintained lines.
• After label changes in ti-community-infra/configs, regenerate and verify the derived docs.
• If the sibling ti-community-infra/configs checkout is missing, locate the local checkout first instead of guessing paths.

Read Next

• For PingCAP-QE/ci search surfaces and validation, read references/ci-repo.md.
• For ti-community-infra/configs edit points and validation, read references/ti-community-infra-configs.md.