Re: Do we still want develop branch?

From: Andrey Semashev (andrey.semashev_at_[hidden])
Date: 2023-11-06 15:07:03

On 11/6/23 02:55, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
> Andrey Semashev wrote:
>> On 11/6/23 02:02, Peter Dimov via Boost wrote:
>>> Andrey Semashev wrote:
>>>> (This workflow actually makes develop meaningless because your CI over
>>>> the feature branch already tests your changes against develop of the
>>>> rest of Boost. Which means after merging to develop you're running the
>>>> same CI again, and might as well just merge to master straight away.)
>>>
>>> You are, but others aren't. They aren't testing your feature branch, but
>>> they are testing your develop branch each time they merge to develop.
>>
>> Sure, but again, does that integration testing actually work?
> 
> It does, at least some of the time.
> 
>> For how long do you hold the changes in develop before merging to master?
> 
> A week or two, usually.
> 
>> The more you linger, the more likely you'll forget to merge.
> 
> I don't forget to merge because I have mergecheck.bat which does
> 
> @for %%i in (libs/accumulators libs/array libs/assert libs/bimap libs/bind libs/chrono libs/compat libs/container_hash libs/core libs/crc libs/describe libs/endian libs/function libs/headers libs/iostreams libs/lambda libs/lambda2 libs/mp11 libs/msm libs/numeric/conversion libs/ptr_container libs/ratio libs/smart_ptr libs/system libs/thread libs/throw_exception libs/timer libs/tuple libs/type_erasure libs/typeof libs/uuid libs/variant2 tools/boostdep tools/boost_install tools/check_build tools/cmake tools/quickbook) do @echo --- %%i --- & git -C %%i diff --name-status origin/master..origin/develop
> 
> I used to have the equivalent on Travis, scheduled weekly:
> 
> https://github.com/pdimov/merge-reminder/blob/master/.travis.yml
> 
> but Travis unfortunately died, so now I run the script manually. :-)

FWIW, there seems to be a way to trigger GHA workflows on schedule:

https://docs.github.com/en/actions/using-workflows/events-that-trigger-workflows#schedule

Anyway, I don't have such a script, and I suspect I'm not alone. I know
I would just as easily forget to run it in a week or two as I would
forget to merge, so it wouldn't really help me much. Which is why I
typically merge to master as soon as the CI on develop passes (i.e. when
I receive an email notification). It just keeps my mental backlog shorter.