[Erp5-dev] branches which come and go

[Bartek Gorny]

2008/11/4 Yoshinori Okuji <yo at nexedi.com>:
> 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.

For you, as Nexedi, perhaps - it is your repository, you can do
whatever you want. For everybody else it would be great. That is, if
you care.

Anyway, I guess I'm just unlucky - the branch was there for two weeks,
and was deleted three hours after I checked it out...

Bartek

> 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/
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> Erp5-dev at erp5.org
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>



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