Re: can we please use branches?

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org>]

Quoting Todd Graham Lewis (tlewis@mindspring.net):
> The GTK guys have done a great job of isolating everyone from the pain
> caused by adding themes.  Is there any reason we can't do the same for
> changes to, e.g., XML?  I'm not criticising, just wondering if we can't
> make these API changes without necessarily breaking everyone.

  Well, apart from the XML point that Miguel already answered, this may
sound a good idea. However I think it gives back more problems than 
it solves:

   - Branches are definitely difficult to manage. Especially in a large
     shared space like the Gnome CVS base, where anybody with write access
     can potentially commit to somewhere else. The best approach IMHO is to
     use stable tags like FOR_PANEL used by ORBit when the head was really
     instable. But just imagine that every package does the same, everybody
     would end-up with a different environment, managing bugs report would
     be a terrible mess.

   - The value of being a large Team is that we can code at less expense,
     the large amount ot testers replacing the painful, heavy regression
     testing one need to use otherwise. That's exactly the model that
     Linux is built on and well ... that mean that the bleeding edge,
     really is :-\, this also gives a terrible productivity boost !

  With Gnome gaining in popularity, there will be a need to have probably
two code bases one being more stable than the other and being updated less
frequently, this also mean some kind of release mechanism, and so this eat
(precious ?) programmer time. I recall discussing the use of something
more elaborate (the source management software from Larry McVoy) but people
didn't want to use it.

  My personnal behaviour is that when I'm making big API changes I develop
them using another CVS base (W3C's one) and then when I think the API are
stable I put this back in the Gnome base for common debugging and finishing
the API implementation. That's what I did this week-end. Now the API changes
are mostly finished. But as soon as the API seems stable, sharing it should
be done ASAP to regain the productivity given by sharing bugs ...

    Just my 2 cents,

  Daniel.

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