[Freeciv-Dev] Re: commit early, commit often (was: Submit patch again?)

[Jason Dorje Short <jshort@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Raimar Falke wrote:

> Ok you want multiple CVS branches. What do other people think?

Multiple branches = good
Multiple repositories = bad (IMO)

I think these terms have been confused sometimes during this discussion.

IMO, the main CVS branch doesn't need to be nearly as stable as it's
being kept.  Before each release, rather than freeze all code make a CVS
branch (i.e. tagged 1.12.1-beta) which then becomes "stable" and gets
only bugfixes.  You can have lots of beta releases, daily snapshots, or
just tell people to use this CVS tag.  Meanwhile progress can still be
made on the head (unstable) branch.  Since there's no impediment to
normal work the code freeze on this stable branch can go on as long as
you want - there's no need to back out code; you can take the time to
fix it properly.

For patches that are especially unstable/code-changing, it may be
desirable to make a separate branch to work on them.  This makes
development on the patch itself *much* easier.  It would be really nice
if CVS would allow you to give write access to a single branch so that
lots of people could work on "unstable" branches.

Using CVS branches like this will take very little work on the part of
the developers, and the benefit is large.

Unlike, say, the Linux kernel, Freeciv is not critical code.  There is
no need for separate repositories for stable and unstable code, and
having such will make a lot more work, I think.

jason