VCS - Branching or not?

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josh
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

Not sure what you mean by preparing a trunk for release, reintegrating is 1 click (as long as you didn't introduce tons of conflicts), and you technically don't need a trunk you could deploy from the release branch.

You mentioned you do make release branches though? Why revert or tuck away features in the trunk instead of making the fix on the branch?

Not using a bug tracker also confuses me. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of software is this & how often do you guys actually have defects?
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Jenk
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by Jenk »

Releases are releases, as I mentioned earlier. They are merely snapshots, and are read-only.

Trunk is "in development" at all times. It is gauranteed to build and pass all tests, but may have some unexpected functionality (but 99.9999% of the time won't) it's merely a tyre-kicking session to ensure nothing is out of the ordinary.
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

I agree with you a lot, and do realize I work alone and you seem to work on a team (and probably different types of software, i dunno you wont tell me)

I agree branching can be dangerous but I think whether you make branches on each major release or not is more of a business decision then a programming one, its a given branching takes more total time then not branching, but it does afford you flexibilities IMO. Like if your software is a plugin for a system that is untestable :-/
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Jenk
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by Jenk »

We've got projects from across various languages, php, vb6, c#, java and smalltalk :)

I didn't realise you were developing alone. The problems I have discussed are prevailent in a team, but not really an issue when working alone. :)
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

Gotchya. Yeah I really wish I had someone to pair with. I also deal with some pretty messy code (Magento)

But I am going to be even more cautious of branching after this discussion!
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

Ok so I just spent all night getting phpUnderControl and all associated tools working. It is very cool. I even have a subdomain virtual host that password protects some projects and not others so I can run all my projects on the same server even if they are closed/open sourced

So if I am developing alone should I set up each release branch as a separate cruise control project?
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Jenk
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by Jenk »

Honestly, I don't really know. I'm yet to work on a project of that setup (I.e. Maintaining previous releases) and have so far only worked with running projects. We (I) work on software that is constantly evolving and as soon as a release is made, and a commit on trunk after that, it is "redundant" and thus work (for that release) desists.

:)
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

Gotchya. My cruise control started crashing left & right so I gotta back up 50GB of SVN repositories and screws with that. I think once start doing continuous integration I will do my work on the trunk instead of on the branches, then I'll only touch a branch for urgent fixes. Thanks for the advice (even tho we didnt agree on all aspects)
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Re: VCS - Branching or not?

Post by josh »

I found out what I really wanted all along was patches, not branches. If I'm in the middle of something unfinished and need to commit something else real quick, I make a patch for what I was doing before I revert, then I do my quick change & commit, and then apply the patch to get back to what I was just working on.
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Re: Mylyn

Post by josh »

josh wrote:- creating separate "editions" of the product that involve cross cutting concerns ( not as simple as including/excluding the module)
I found out that with PHING, and enough automated tests, it *was* as simple as including/excluding the module. I now have a ton more modules and it has bettered my entire business. I work from one single trunk and hate branching now. lol. I do it for release branching only (I will go back 1 branch and back-merge the bugfix if possible, if back merging will take too much time the users must upgrade to the latest release).
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