[Erp5-dev] branches which come and go

[Yoshinori Okuji]

Hi Bartek,

We have already talked about this story. I don't want to repeat the same 
discussion. Please read my message:

http://mail.nexedi.com/pipermail/erp5-dev/2007-September/001377.html

Branching is no good for us. But one had made a branch accidentally. So it was 
removed. That's it.

Regards,
YO

On Tuesday 04 November 2008 10:16:04 Bartek Gorny wrote:
> 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



-- 
Yoshinori Okuji, Nexedi KK President / Nexedi SA CTO
Nexedi: Consulting and Development of Free / Open Source Software
http://www.nexedi.co.jp/
ERP5: Full Featured High End Open Source ERP
http://www.erp5.com/
ERP5 Wiki: Developer Zone for ERP5 Community
http://www.erp5.org/