Branch your modules (was: [development] Tag your 4.6 modules)

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

Robert Douglass wrote:

> A real mistake is being made by developers who have modules for 4.6, 
> are updating them to 4.7, yet have not tagged them as 4.6.


branched

> The first time I encountered this was with the devel module. I 
> submitted a task request to lock the 4.6 version, but it hasn't been 
> done:
> http://drupal.org/node/35584
>
> Now I've encountered the same problem with the sections module. The 
> sections module is great for solving a number of specific problems, 
> and people like to use it. It used to work with 4.6, but now it 
> doesn't. Why? Because the same version (1.9), painstakingly and 
> lovingly updated to use the Forms Api, is now in both the 4-6 and 4-7 
> branches.
>

That's probably because somebody used tags not a branch.

> Disclaimer: I am a CVS noob. I have never tagged anything for 4.6 or 
> 4.7, but I recently got instructions for Moshe on how to do this, and 
> before I start porting any module to 4.7, I will make sure a 4.6 tag 
> exists.
>

Funny, the instructions are in the FAQ.txt in the top level contrib 
directory for more time than I care to remember. :P

> If we don't take care of this problem now, while we're still pre 4.7 
> release, it will just be harder later to go back and repair the 
> damage. Don't let your 4.6 modules go extinct because you didn't tag 
> them.
>

Branch.

What you want to do is as follows:

 To properly branch your code perform the following in your local workspace.

   Modules:
     cvs tag -b DRUPAL-4-6 modules/mymodule
   Themes:
     cvs tag -b DRUPAL-4-6 themes/mytheme

   Note that branching is restricted to the 'modules', 'themes',
   'theme-engines' and 'translations' directories.  You can't branch your
   sandbox.

(directly from the FAQ.txt)

After that you will need to get a cvs checkput for the new branch and 
fix bugs in that version in this branch. Further development should be 
in cv HEAD only.

Cheers,
    Gerhard