branching

[Graham Percival]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 11:08:08AM -0300, Han-Wen Nienhuys wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 7:30 AM, address@hidden
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> this issue was exposed due to a (seemingly innocuous) one-line change
> >> by Mike.  Can I ask that you branch off the 2.14 branch so the release
> >> candidate does not get disturbed by other one-liners with unintended
> >> effects?  If you don't branch off a stable branch, 2.14 will never get
> >> finished.
> >
> The beauty of branching off is that nobody needs to hold off anything.
>  You just continue to put stuff in master (2.15.0), and cherry-pick
> whatever needs to go to 2.14.

I am pessimistic about this, but let's ask for volunteers.  Who
wants to cherry-pick stuff?


The reason that I'm pessimistic is that we racked up a huge amount
of "technical debt" (i.e. bugs) during 2.11 and the early phase of
2.13.  I'm concerned that if we don't have regular releases, the
unstable branch is going to accumilate bugs.

I am also too tired to fight over it right now, but I also think
that this is the wrong model of branching.  There's basically two
ways:
1. keep master in a "ready-to-release" mode at all times; any
serious bug gets reverted or fixed ASAP.  Unstable development
happens on separate branches, which are merged to master when
they're ready.
2. toss whatever garbage you want onto master, and make a "stable"
branch where a bunch of poor suckers cleans up the branch until
it's ready for a release.

I have an obvious bias which I'm not even pretending to hide (if
we waited until GOP to discuss this, I would have made several
edits over a few days, until I thought I was introducing the
question in a fair and neutral manner).


But I suppose we can come back to that debate later.  For now, who
is volunteering to handle the cherry-picking?

Cheers,
- Graham