Best Practices enquiry

[Yannick Fortin]

  Hi all.

  I would like to have the opinion of the experts here regarding when 
to merge.

  We currently have a rather standard setup. We have a branch for the 
stable, released version of our software where we only put bug fixes and 
minor improvements. All the development is made on the trunk (or 
short-lived branches as needed). We are a few days away from releasing a 
new version. After this release, we intend to switch the bulk of the 
work to the trunk.

  Obviously, we want the bug fixes made on the stable branch to also be 
included in the trunk, but not the other way around. How should we 
proceed ? I see 3 alternatives. Either

  1- Merge the branch to the trunk each time a bug fix is done on
     the branch, resolving (an increasing number of) conflicts
     as they appear (no real need for merge tags in this case); or

  2- Merge the branch to the trunk not very often, when the number
     of fixes is sufficiently high to warrant the 3 days that will
     be needed to resolve the conflicts and make sure the fixes
     are still relevant, and use tags to mark the merge points; or

  3- Do not merge at all and manually apply the patch on both
     branches.

  What say you ?



Yannick