Re: Removing old branches

From: Edward Diener (eldiener_at_[hidden])
Date: 2019-11-15 16:16:39

On 11/15/2019 7:51 AM, Alexander Grund via Boost wrote:
> Private reply intentionally:
> 
> Completely understood your intention. Just wanted to give some 
> background on the type of branches in question so decision makers have 
> it easier.

I removed all the stale branches in Boost PP.

> 
> Am 15.11.19 um 13:49 schrieb Edward Diener via Boost:
>> On 11/15/2019 7:32 AM, Alexander Grund via Boost wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> I was just pointing out that Boost PP is hardly the only Boost library 
>> which has lots of stale branches. If it is not against Boost policy to 
>> delete old, stale branches I will be glad to do so, but I was just 
>> looking for some clarification from other Boost developers first.