[development] tracking projects via CVS

[Derek Wright]

On Nov 14, 2006, at 7:02 AM, Ray Zimmerman wrote:

> If I understand correctly, this branch can no longer be assumed to  
> be stable, correct?

on the contrary, you can more safely assume it's stable, since  
there's *finally* the option for that module's maintainer to make a  
DRUPAL-4-7--2 branch for new features that are still compatible with  
4.7.x core.

> For example, I believe there was a 1.0 release of the Views module  
> and now the 4.7 branch is seeing a lot of commits on it's way  
> toward 1.1. Is that still considered a stable branch?

a) if you want something *stable*, use an official release  
(4.7.x-1.0) not whatever happens to be in the end of a branch in CVS.

b) unless merlin is being irresponsible, all those changes in the  
DRUPAL-4-7 branch are bug fixes to the 1.0 release, on the way to  
another stable 1.1 release.

c) if he was really making drastic changes, or adding new features,  
he should be using a different branch (DRUPAL-4-7--2 or HEAD, see  
below), and releasing those as 4.7.x-2.* (assuming they're still  
compatible with 4.7.x core).


> How do I know what CVS tag to track for a stable branch? Or Is the  
> convention going to be different for each contrib author?

ultimately, i can't force the maintainers to follow the guidelines  
i've documented, so yes, the last word is what it says on the project  
node, or via whatever other means the maintainer chooses to make  
their intentions know.  but, if everyone plays by these rules:

http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/branches-and-tags/contributions
http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/releases

then DRUPAL-4-7 should always be stable, and new features either  
happen in HEAD or in DRUPAL-4-7--2 depending on the maintainer's  
approach to using HEAD:

http://drupal.org/node/17570#HEAD

hope that clarifies.  webchick and i spent *A LOT* of time on these  
handbook pages, so please RTFM. ;)

thanks,
-derek