Re: Stable repo

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 3:43 AM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 24-Apr-2009, Rik wrote:
>
> | I would pull from main to stable
> | only during stage 1 when large changes are expected to be introduced.
> | At some point stage 2 is declared and pulling stops and the work
> | in the stable repo shifts to making sure newly the introduced code works
> | well.
>
> During stage 2 there could still be some smaller chanages in the main
> archive that we would want to incorporate in the next release, so that
> means applying those changes twice.
>

I think we'll be able to just transplant these. This will induce a
merge, but no extra work. At least I think that having two different
patches in two branches that do the same thing makes no problem in a
merge.

> | Development in the main repo continues just as it ever did without regard to
> | the schedule for the stable repo.
>
> With that model, I think it will be difficult to get anyone to pay
> attention to fixing bugs in the stable archive.

Why more difficult than now? I don't see it.

> So I don't think
> releases would happen because people tend to be more interested in
> writing cool new features instead of getting things in shape for a
> release (you can count me in that group too).
>

That's what I'm more interested in, too, but I still try to fix bugs.

> I don't think a short feature freeze really causes that much trouble,
> especially since people can continue to work on new things in their
> own archives, then merge them later, when the main development archive
> is open for stage 1 or 2.
>

Maybe you use some magic I don't know, but I'm not able to
conveniently do this without pulling & merging in that other archive.
Which then raises a question what to do with those changes next. When
stage 1 happens, I may be already short of time. That's what I wanted
to avoid - synchronization problems. I may be well prepared to merge
my changes carefully into the main tree, except that I'm not allowed,
because it's feature freeze. After those 2 months, the main archive is
ready, but I'm not. Will others do the work?

regards

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz