Re: [boost] Updated Development and Release Practices for 1.35.0

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-08-24 07:37:55

Gottlob Frege wrote:
>>   //svn.boost.org/svn/boost/
>>
>>                        trunk
>>
>>                        tags/
>>                           ...
>>                           releases/
>>                              ...
>>                              1_34_1
>>                              1_35_0
>>
>>                        branches/
>>                           release
>>                           libs/
>>                              ...
>>                              python
>>                              serialization
>>                              ...
>>
> 
> Assuming this is the latest proposal, maybe an outside opinion of an
> idiot user (ie me) might help?

Yes, for sure. User perspectives balance the developer perspectives.

 > P.S. I'm NOT a SVN user (Perforce for me, thanks).
> 
> Without reading Beman's doc (and outside users probably won't) nor
> most of these emails, this is my first impression:
> 
> - 'tags/releases' is where past releases are - excellent

Yep. And I've updated the trac page to reflect Dave's suggestion that it 
be "releases" with an "s" rather than "release".

> - 'branches' is where unstable development is happening (but really, I
> cheated - I read the emails to determine that for sure - because
> 'branches' can also mean released items, like a fork of boost or
> something like that, or maybe someday boost 2.0 (only supports C++0x)
> is released and boost 1.40 (old code base) is also released - these
> would be two 'branches' of boost)

The "branches" name is traditional with CVS and SVN users for where 
unstable development is happening, so I don't think there is much 
potential for confusion there, except perhaps for those with no CVS or 
SVN exposure.

> - trunk or branches/release is where the 'latest stable but not yet
> released boost' (ie the one I might experiment with to see what's
> coming) lives.  Which is it?  ie which is the 'release_candidate'?
> 
> Basically, I'd like words like
> - 'released' (note the 'd')
> - 'in_progress'
> - 'release_candidate'
> 
> or similar.  But maybe that's just because I don't use SVN.

Hum... "branches/release_candidate" would certainly be more explicit 
than "branches/release". It is longer, but an SVN user doesn't actually 
have to type the name very often, so I'm not inclined to worry about that.

Anyone else care to hazard an opinion on "branches/release_candidate" vs 
"branches/release"?

> And sorry to bring naming back up as a topic.  Feel free to move on to
> other things (ie just get started), but I always find a 'first
> impression' is worthwhile (and only comes once).

I don't mean to cut off repository organization and naming discussion 
prematurely. I do, however, want to make sure we don't stall on those 
topics while there are other decisions that need to be made. And, yes, 
"first impression" are very valuable.

Thanks,

--Beman