[development] new CVS branch/tag conventions (was Re: tagadelic 'backport' for 4.7)

[Gary Feldman]

Derek Wright wrote:
> ...
> well, that's the question...  at the talk i gave at drupalcon 
> (http://drupal.org/node/86694), everyone hated using an underscore '_' 
> for this.  e.g.:
>
> "DRUPAL-4-7_1" as the 1st development branch compatible with 4.7.x, and
> "DRUPAL-4-7_1-0" as the 4.7.x-1.0 release tag
>
> there were a few alternatives proposed during the discussion for a 
> different delimiter than '_', such as '-V-', '-R-', '-REV-', etc.
>
> at barcamp, when i had a chance to speak to dries about it, he 
> suggested (and i like) just using '--'.  so, here are the viable 
> contenders for branch and tag names:
>
> 1) "DRUPAL-4-7--1" and "DRUPAL-4-7--1-0"
>
> 2) "DRUPAL-4-7-V-1" and "DRUPAL-4-7-V-1-0"
>
> 3) "DRUPAL-4-7-R-1" and "DRUPAL-4-7-R-1-0"
>
> 4) "DRUPAL-4-7-REV-1" and "DRUPAL-4-7-REV-1-0"
>
> 5) "DRUPAL-4-7_1" and "DRUPAL-4-7_1-0"  (just for comparison, this 
> isn't a contender)
I must be missing something simple.  Why isn't DRUPAL-4-7 adequate for 
the branch?  Since there's no expectation of a 4.7.3.1 release, all 4.7 
development ought to be on a single branch. 

Or is this a result of the idea that DRUPAL-4-7--1 is really going to 
become either 4.8 or 5.0, but since we don't know yet, it's being called 
DRUPAL-4-7--1?  If that's the case, then why is it necessary to have a 
number there (since again, there won't be more than one), so that it 
could be DRUPAL-4-7-NEXT?  (Yes, I've asked something similar before, 
but still haven't seen an explanation of why this wouldn't work.)

Aside: From the "For What It's Worth Department," another source control 
system which I've used has, as a popular convention, the notion that 
branches are always in lower case, while tags are always in upper case.  
It's a simple convention, easy to apply, and makes the distinction 
between branch labels and tag labels visually very apparent.  I don't 
know how folks would react to it, though.  I've applied that convention 
to every subsequent project I've worked on, whether CVS or something else.

Gary