[Erp5-dev] branches which come and go

[Bartek Gorny]

Hello,

I was very happy to see a branch of ERP5 in svn, the "version-5.2.1" -
looked like a step towards some stabilization. I set up a new instance
based on it, but today I see that the branch is gone - simply deleted
from svn, with a terse comment "branch is always bad, trunk must be
stable".

Please, keep in mind that there still are people out there who try to
use your code - creating and deleting branches offhandedly, without a
word of warning or explanation is rather disturbing.

What is really needed here is a description of the repository
management policy - if not branches, then what, and how? For example,
there are tags in use, but there is no explanation what a tag really
means in this case - is it a "rock-solid" release, or just a more or
less random revision with a relatively small number of test failures,
or is it something else?

While deleting the branch, you said "Delete branch, branch is always
bad. trunk must be stable at any time." Cool if it were, but it is not
- even your own wiki page admits it, when it says on
http://www.erp5.org/DownloadSourceCode: "Upgrading to HEAD can be
dangerous. You have been warned.". So you are contradicting yourself -
on one hand you say that trunk is unstable and sometimes dangerous,
but at the same time you delete a branch because trunk is stable...

Also, why do you think that "branch is always bad"? Branches have been
around since the old CVS days, and they are there for a reason. For
decades, developers have been using branches to achieve some stability
in their code. If you don't want release branches, then use
feature/development branches - this:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.branchmerge.commonpatterns.html
is a good reference.

Bartek

-- 
"Software is largely a service industry operating under the persistent
but unfounded delusion that it is a manufacturing industry."
Eric S.Raymond, "The Magic Cauldron"