Re: branch proposal

[Ben Pfaff]

John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:

> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 08:37:19AM -0700, Ben Pfaff wrote:
>      John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:
>      
>      > I'm still comming to terms with git, but SCM tools I've worked with in
>      > the past normally make it possible to have a branch which
>      > *automatically* inherits changes which are commited to its parent (ie
>      > the thing it branches from).  Isn't this possible with git?
>      
>      I don't understand how it could work with any SCM.  Isn't there
>      always the possibility for merge conflicts that have to be
>      resolved by hand?
>
> Yes.  There is always that possibility, and obviously if that happens,
> then what I described won't work.  But in the simpler case, (where a
> file is touched in the parent, but not in the branch) the branch will
> receive the changes from the parent.  If the file is touched in both,
> then it'll attempt to merge; if there's a conflict then that'll have
> to be resolved by hand as you say.

Thanks.  That makes a lot of sense.

Git could support this kind of thing if it were done from a
"hook", so that when you committed to one branch it would also
make the same commit to other branches.  But I do not know of
anyone who has implemented such a thing.

> What confuses me about your proposal, if I understand it correctly, is
> that changes checked into the "development" branch will also appear in
> the "bug fix" branch whether we want them to or not. Usually it's not
> what we want; we want the opposite.

Yes, we do want the opposite.  I think that my proposal must have
been misunderstood then.  Here it is again:

        * Check bug fixes (only) into the "stable" branch.

        * Check everything else into the "master" branch.

        * Periodically, pull the bug fixes from the stable branch
          into the master branch, so that the master branch also
          receives those fixes.
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