Re: Removing old branches

From: Alexander Grund (alexander.grund_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-11-15 12:32:04

Am 15.11.19 um 11:56 schrieb Edward Diener via Boost:
> I received an issue about Boost PP having lots of old branches which 
> the issuer would like removed. I notice most other Boost libraries 
> also have lots of old branches. Is there any policy about removing 
> these old branches from a Boost library repository ? Many of these old 
> branches are svn-branches, but most of them do not have any value any 
> more and, of course, do not affect the current 'develop' or 'master' 
> branch.

It was me requesting this. See e.g. 
https://github.com/boostorg/preprocessor/branches/stale for about 70 
stale branches. According to GitHub all(or at least most) of them are 
merged into master/develop as indicated by e.g. "1 commit ahead, 275 
commits behind develop" where the "1 commit" is "This commit was 
manufactured by cvs2svn to create branch 'SPIRIT_1_6'."

I don't see any value in those branches, as they look like feature 
branches from SVN times that are already merged and hence obsolete. 
Every Fork will have them too which makes switching to new feature 
branches when developing cumbersome.

IMO one can delete all branches saying "1 commit ahead, *" where the 
latest commit is from "nobody" without further checking. The remaining 
ones might need a check if they actually contain new stuff.