Re: [boost] [git help] Documenting common modular boost workflows

Subject: Re: [boost] [git help] Documenting common modular boost workflows
From: Julian Gonggrijp (j.gonggrijp_at_[hidden])
Date: 2013-10-23 10:45:58

Dave Abrahams wrote:

> The release managers (or a continuous integration script) assembles a
> release candidate that references, by default, the latest commits to the
> "master" branch of all submodules.  Test failures may result in rolling
> back to earlier commits on that branch in a given submodule.
> 
> In other words, library authors release their code on whatever schedule
> they like, and Boost release managers assemble a combination of library
> releases into a Boost release.

I'm a proponent of the use of Git and GitFlow in boost (in fact I 
*might* have been the first to suggest GitFlow [1]) as well as of 
modularization, but I can't help seeing a potential problem with this 
approach.

What do you do if module releases conflict? For example, if the 
latest release of module A is only compatible with older releases of 
module B, or if one module depends on the latest version of B while 
another depends on the previous? When such effects propagate you 
might have to be very conservative with the global update even though 
most modules have updated several times in the meanwhile.

In my opinion it would be better to make hotfixes in the offending 
modules (using standard gitflow hotfix branches) so that every Boost 
release can include the latest versions of all modules. Of course, 
that requires more coordination between the release managers and the 
library maintainers.

-Julian

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[1] http://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost/2012/02/190200.php