Re: [boost] [1.37.0] branches/release open for merges

From: Daniel James (daniel_james_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-08-20 17:10:16

On 20/08/2008, Christian Larsen <contact_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
>  The more I read about how you manage the repository, the more I wonder why
> you don't do like most projects I have been working with. Maybe that is what
> you are doing, but I can't get my head around it. ;)
[snip explanation]

The main obstacle is testing. We need the feedback from the regression
testing to tell if our code works on the large number of platforms and
compilers. It seems to be easier to run the tests on two fixed
branches. There's some talk of new testing systems which might be more
flexible.

There also doesn't seem to be anyone willing to maintain the extra
branches or point releases. And some boost developers don't seem very
keen on working with multiple branches. If we had a culture of shared
code ownership, we might be able to make up for that.

>  AFAIK new versions of Subversion even helps manage this merging nightmare
> by automatically keeping track of exactly which revisions from e.g. trunk
> are merged into each of the other branches. You might want to look into that
> feature. If an older version of Subversion is used (pre 1.5 I think), then a
> tool such as svnmerge might help.

We're upgrading to 1.5 this week, but I don't think we're going to
upgrade the repository format for a while. I've been using svnmerge,
but I'm in the minority. The merge data on the release branch is
pretty useless because most most developers aren't using it (some seem
to actively dislike it).

Daniel