On Wednesday 15 of October 2014 04:30:15 Michele Calgaro wrote:
- about freezing, development and v14.0.x
Tim, is it possible to create a GIT branch for v14.0.0 so that we can keep pushing patches *not to be in v14.0.0* to the main trunk? The main question here is actually "how are we going to maintain the v14.0.x branch when v14.0.0 has been release and the main trunk will be for v14.1.0"?
Cheers Michele
This raises the question of the use of branches in the further development. There are several options:
1) One extreme - do not use branches at all.
= R14.0.0 === R14.0.1 === R14.0.2 === R14.1.0 === R14.1.1 === R14.2.0 === R15.0.0
I assume that the experience from the maintenance branch v3.5.13-sru excludes this option.
2) Create a branches for the minor/"feature" revisions:
__R14.1.1___R14.1.2___R14.1.3 / / __R15.0.1 / / = R14.0.0 === R14.1.0 === R14.2.0 === R15.0.0 === R15.1.0 \ \ \ __R14.2.1___R14.2.2 \ __R14.0.1___R14.0.2___R14.0.3
3) Create a branches for the major/"abi" revisions and 'sub' branches for minor/"feature" revisions:
___R15.1.0___R15.1.1 / /__R15.0.1___R15.0.2 / = R14.0.0 ====== R15.0.0 ====== R16.0.0 \ __R14.0.1___R14.0.2___R14.0.3 \ __R14.1.0___R14.1.1___R14.1.2 \ __R14.2.0___R14.2.1
Based on the existing experience for me seems optimal option 2). In any case, I suggest to not create a 'tags' for rc versions - solely for the final releases, to avoid unnecessarily large number of tags.
The second question is "when is the time" to create a branch. As I mentioned earlier, nightly-builds are designed to build on 'master' branch. When we create new branch, then nightly-builds should start with version numbers corresponding to the new target version - for example, 14.1.0~preXXX. Thus, if a new branch will be created now - with RC1, then I assume that this is the moment for me to start worry about the preparation of stable-builds in my ppa.
I note: for some time I maintain 'preliminary-stable-builds' on my mirror. At the same time I have already prepared PPA to maintain 'stable-builds' on the build-farm. That is to say, that I am ready to maintain maintanance releases R14.0.x.
What is your opinion - when is the time to create branch and start the 'maintanance mode'?