In order to simplify the development process I've this strange "rule" that new things are admissible in the stable branch patch releases as long as they are ver

In order to simplify the development process I've this strange "rule" that new things are admissible in the stable branch patch releases as long as they are very very unlikely to interfere with all the rest. For example in this case, a testing environment and the other Sentinel changes actually improve reliability. From the point of view of BITPOS, it is a new command that if not used should not modify the behaviour/stability of the rest of the system in any way. However compare this process with creating a new release. With 2.8.7 I just need to write a changelog, tag the release on Github, and update a few numbers in the web site. With a release the process is very different, we have a number of release candidates before switching to stable and so forth.