RE: Branching Parenting Strategies

[Chris Chambers]

We have a similar environment, number of developers, and web-based solution.

 

The process I selected is as follows:

 

We've been going with a regularly scheduled weekly release branch for most changes. This gets merged back in after the weekly release. For larger projects, we've been going with an early branch (say a month out) which doesn't receive any of the changes for the (say) 4 weekly releases until the week before it goes out. Then it too gets merged in with the mainline, and the normal-weekly-branch is made as usual, except that it contains the month-long changes as well.

 

So developers either develop in the mainline (for the next scheduled release), in the early branch (for the long-term release), or do bugfixes in the normal-weekly-release branch. No need to make changes in two places at any time, since the weekly-release branches are the only thing that goes out. People do it anyway though.

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hiddenOn Behalf Of Brian Sequeira
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 11:18 AM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Branching Parenting Strategies

Hello,

 

    Since branching is the most complicated of the basic source control activities, I have a question regarding large scale development strategies. What kind of branch management strategies are more commonly used for Web-based live environment projects? 1. Task Branches off the trunk or 2. Integration Branches off the Trunk or a different combination.

 

    Our development effort includes 20-25 developers, a large CVS repository with multiple projects and tens of thousands of lines of code. Currently we use simple branching and work on both the branch, the head and other branches if necessary. The same code changes go into multiple branches. How do we go about reducing the development effort and restricting developers to make changes only on a certain branch? Or do we change our branch management strategy?

 

Any input greatly appreciated, Thanks.

Brian Sequeira
Build & Configuration

Real Media
580 Virginia Ave - Suite 200
Fort Washington PA 19034
Tel:  215.654.8376 x556
Fax: 215.591.0704
address@hidden
www.realmedia.com

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