Feature Overview (aka. Goal Summary)

Introduce a set of best practices and tools to efficiently maintain a fork of Backstage libraries while ensuring minimal divergence from the upstream project. This will enable the Red Hat team to manage critical security vulnerabilities and other necessary customizations easily without compromising stability and maintainability.

Best practices document

Refinement document

Goals (aka. expected user outcomes)

• Enable developers to effortlessly contribute and maintain changes that are crucial for Red Hat's specific use case.
• Implement automated systems for testing and continuous integration to ensure the stability of the modifications.
• Facilitate regular rebasing and synchronization with the latest upstream Backstage versions.

Requirements (aka. Acceptance Criteria):

• Utilize automated tools to rebase our fork regularly onto the latest upstream versions.
• The same test suites as the upstream Backstage project must be run to ensure stability.
• Automated CI pipeline must be implemented to run test suites on each push/merge.

Out of Scope

• Non-essential code refactoring, style changes, or spelling corrections should not be part of the fork maintenance efforts.
• Features unrelated to security fixes or essential customizations.

Documentation Considerations

• Define and document the process for contributing changes to the fork and rebasing with the upstream.
• Guidelines for writing clear justifications, test additions, and linkage of PRs.
• Update internal documentation repositories, linking to relevant external resources, e.g., Upstream First guidelines, NPM Patch, and Verdaccio documentation.
• Provide training or reference materials for developers to maintain the fork effectively.