Re: [boost] Merge procedure to master (was: Release sponsorship

Subject: Re: [boost] Merge procedure to master (was: Release sponsorship
From: Andreas Schäfer (gentryx_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-23 15:12:30

Heya,

On 19:51 Fri 23 Jan     , Barend Gehrels wrote:
> Peter Dimov schreef op 23-1-2015 om 19:30:
> > While a merge to master can be painful in that interdependencies can 
> > cause unexpected failures, it is still - arguably - better to learn 
> > about these as soon as possible and fix them gradually over the course 
> > of normal operations, instead of during one protracted pre-release march.

Agreed. Continuous integration FTW.

> > Which is why I merge to master sooner rather than later. Of course, 
> > there is no single optimal strategy. For core libraries, specifically, 
> > on the one hand, you can break the world if your master doesn't work, 
> > on the other, nobody else can merge to master if they depend on your 
> > changes being merged first.

Theoretically merges to master should never break the master as unit
tests *should* catch all potential errors before the changesets get
uploaded. It's normal to have a trunk breakage every now and then, but
it's less likely to happen the smaller the changesets are and the
better the test coverage is.

When a library changes its API in non-backwards-compatible manner,
then this is of course another type of problem. My experience from
other projects is that a RFC on the devel mailing list prior to
merging (e.g. 2 weeks) is sufficient. Of course this assumes that all
parts of the code are maintained. Non-maintained classes would need to
be fixed by the developer performing the merge.

> However, if we merge blindly, ignoring errors, for example once per 
> week, that would feel really uncomfortable to me, and would it really help?

Only merge if your code passes its tests. If it does, why be afraid of
merging? If it doesn't, don't bother to merge.

Cheers

-- 
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Andreas Schäfer
HPC and Grid Computing
Chair of Computer Science 3
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
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