[development] Is DRUPAL-5 branch necessary for module?

[Michael Favia]

_craig wrote:
> Do I really need to have a separate DRUPAL-5 branch for my contributed
> module? The documentation* seems to indicate I need to.  Is anything
> preventing me from just tagging files under HEAD with DRUPAL-5--1-0?  Right
> now and in the near future I will only be making changes for 5.x so I don't
> see the need to have a separate branch.  Of course if you look at my
> module**, it's too late...

The explicit branching really helps those of us who are using CVS to
keep the modules up to date on ANY version of drupal we run. There might
not be a ton of us but we are the first line of defense against bugs and
the most likely creators of patches to resolve them before the release
gets tagged.

Without explicit branching we would really need to check with the
developer (or CVS commit messages hopefully if the developer is nice) to
see if he/she has "internally branched" the module towards the next
drupal version yet. I recognize the perceived double effort and i can
only offer this as a response:

If you would like to develop on the HEAD and only occasionally port your
changes back to the 5_0 branch for bug fix releases and new features
worth the effort, then we as CVS updating developers wold be much
happier "occasionally" needing to interrogate HEAD if we need cutting
edge code.

I'm not intentionally speaking for everyone here but i would like to
know if others agree. Im saying i'd rather be behind the curve a little
as opposed to having to CONSTANTLY monitor the changes being made to the
HEAD.

Assuming that we all USE more modules than we DEVELOP this would
hopefully represent a much smaller workload for all of us. If someone
would like me to manage this task for their module id be happy to do the
thankless job on any module I use personally or professionally (it's a
long list). Thoughts?

-- 
Michael Favia                   michael at favias.org
tel. 512.585.5650        http://michael.favias.org