[development] CVS branch work best practices?

[Greg Knaddison - GVS]

On 2/2/07, Bèr Kessels <ber at webschuur.com> wrote:
> Here is the case:
> Foo module has the following tree
> |
> |--- DRUPAL-4-7
> |--- DRUPAL-5
> |     |- tag DRUPAL-5--1-0
> |     | lots of hard work and patches applied
> |     |- tag DRUPAL-5--2-0
> |
> HEAD.

I got to this conversation a little late and I have skimmed most of
the subsequent posts but there's a small problem with this tree that I
think is not a commonly known practice.  I just learned this from dww
last week so I will try to channel his spirit.

If you don't like the way I channel, you can read the handbooks - this
is covered at http://drupal.org/handbook/cvs/quickstart#branch-dev and
on http://drupal.org/node/17570

Assuming that the 5--2-0 tag is a new set of features then you have
added new features to your DRUPAL-5 branch.  When you add new features
to that branch you make it harder to "just do a security release"
should there be a security problem with your 5--1-0 tag while you are
in the middle of your hard work.  A more appropriate branch/tag
structure:

|
|--------- DRUPAL-4-7
|--------- DRUPAL-5
|          |- tag DRUPAL-5--1-0
|          | only bugfixes applied
|          |- DRUPAL-5--1-1 (but not DRUPAL-5--2-0 on this branch)
|
|
|--------- DRUPAL-5--2 - branch
|          | Lots of hardwork and new features here
|          |- tag DRUPAL-5--2-0
|          | only bugfixes applied
|          |- DRUPAL-5--2-1 (but not DRUPAL-5--3-0 on this branch)
|
|
HEAD.

We covered all this and more in the Drupal Dojo lesson last weekend.
A screencast is available via bittorrent:

http://www.zudeo.com/az-web/details/Z77GTJCGUXMHSF23Y6EM6ITI63UKZXG2.html

or just the torrent:
http://web.azureusplatform.com/az-web/download/Z77GTJCGUXMHSF23Y6EM6ITI63UKZXG2.torrent

So, that would argue for branch-tips containing unstable code and only
official releases being the known stable items.

Regards,
Greg