Missing CVS branches in contrib -- peeve
This is a pet peeve. Be forewarned. :-) Today, for the Nth time, I again wasted time looking for a module in the 4.7 branch of the contrib repository that was not there. Why? Because it was in the HEAD branch, even though it only works with 4.7 -- and not 5.0 or later. So this brings me to my pet peeve of the moment: module maintainers who do not branch their modules when appropriate. How can this be made easier for people, and more reliable for folks who want to download or checkout contrib code?
On 1/2/07, Chris Johnson <cxjohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a pet peeve. Be forewarned. :-)
Today, for the Nth time, I again wasted time looking for a module in the 4.7 branch of the contrib repository that was not there. Why? Because it was in the HEAD branch, even though it only works with 4.7 -- and not 5.0 or later.
So this brings me to my pet peeve of the moment: module maintainers who do not branch their modules when appropriate.
How can this be made easier for people
We need a good concise document explaining step by step how to version code. Ideally with some popular GUI client examples.
and more reliable for folks who want to download or checkout contrib code?
Create an issue requesting it. This will be an iterative process. This is the "next step" of having more professional "best practices" code management. Unfortunately, doing the actually branching can only be done by the maintainer. -- Boris Mann Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com
We need a good concise document explaining step by step how to version code.
Yes, there is a need for more documentation volunteers and reducing the cvs barrier to entry for developers, even more for themers. In this case branching isn't necessarily the issue - the maintainer can simply edit the HEAD release node and designate it as compatible with Drupal 4.7. It will then appear in the list of 4.7 modules on drupal.org. Maintainers are also encouraged to designate the HEAD release as 5.x compatible in cases where it is working fine in d5 but they don't feel comfortable branching yet. If you make an issue for the appropriate project explaining this they will usually do so. Proper branching is nice and all, but the bigger problem is that there aren't enough module maintainers, or hours devoted to module maintenance, in general. The version-module support matrix feature request (http://drupal.org/node/63491) might help too. .ck Boris Mann wrote:
On 1/2/07, Chris Johnson <cxjohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a pet peeve. Be forewarned. :-)
Today, for the Nth time, I again wasted time looking for a module in the 4.7 branch of the contrib repository that was not there. Why? Because it was in the HEAD branch, even though it only works with 4.7 -- and not 5.0 or later.
So this brings me to my pet peeve of the moment: module maintainers who do not branch their modules when appropriate.
How can this be made easier for people
We need a good concise document explaining step by step how to version code. Ideally with some popular GUI client examples.
and more reliable for folks who want to download or checkout contrib code?
Create an issue requesting it.
This will be an iterative process. This is the "next step" of having more professional "best practices" code management. Unfortunately, doing the actually branching can only be done by the maintainer.
On 2-Jan-07, at 2:54 PM, Boris Mann wrote:
We need a good concise document explaining step by step how to version code. Ideally with some popular GUI client examples.
Done, for the command line: http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart#branch-tag It'd be nice if users of GUI tools would step up and convert this document to their tool of choice, and put them under http:// drupal.org/handbook/cvs/clients. -Angie
Chris Johnson wrote:
This is a pet peeve. Be forewarned. :-)
Today, for the Nth time, I again wasted time looking for a module in the 4.7 branch of the contrib repository that was not there. Why? Because it was in the HEAD branch, even though it only works with 4.7 -- and not 5.0 or later.
So this brings me to my pet peeve of the moment: module maintainers who do not branch their modules when appropriate.
How can this be made easier for people, and more reliable for folks who want to download or checkout contrib code?
Please note that as we move forward, it is slowly becoming less and less advisable to stay up to date via CVS. While we do not yet have the tools to stay up to date 'the right way' (i.e, only through official releases) we are very close to being able to have them. In fact, there is only one piece that stands in the way, and that's a simple way to get the data off drupal.org. Right now we have enough info that one could mine the data from d.o. and parse the project page, as it now lists current releases by branch, and this is certainly a good start, but the mining is not going to be very efficient and prone to error if/when the format of the project page changes.
participants (6)
-
Angela Byron -
Boris Mann -
Chris Johnson -
Chris Kennedy -
Earl Miles -
Karoly Negyesi