On 07.08.2012 13:09, [email protected] wrote:

> While the two setups are very similar, almost isomorphs, they're not exactly 
> so. There are important practical consequences that distinguish the two.
>
>      - Releases happen on a fixed schedule
>      - Minor versions have a defined lifetime
>      - The number of patch releases is limited by default.
>
> These give predictability and focus to everyone participating on the project. 
> It gives everyone something to align to.

I understand the advantages of these points and fully support them. I 
just wonder, why you need the parallel rolling branches for it. Can't we 
just establish the fixed scheduling in the classical branches? Instead 
of fixed merge-down-days we would have fixed branch-days.

> There are other practical consequences. As a developer, you don't have to 
> worry about *when* to do or merge a specific change. You get it up to snuff 
> and decide *where* to apply it (i.e., on which branch).
>
> The fact that the branches roll from release to release means anyone tracking 
> development branches decides how much pain they are willing to take and stay 
> the course. You don't have to wait for the next branch to come along so you 
> can jump to it.

Ok, here I see the point. Tracking a certain level of code quality is 
easier with rolling branches. OTOH it's probably easy to install 
automatic commit-aliases that track which ever branch currently has a 
specific quality status, like "beta" or "rc".

> "Quality" in a way jumps up and down with the merges, but I don't think we 
> can eliminate these jumps at the moment and in reality they are not 
> introduced by the proposed model.

Of course we can't eliminate the quality changes. That's why I asked if 
we shouldn't better use a model, that makes that fact explicit 
(transition focused rather than level focused) by branches that (more or 
less monotonically) increase in quality until end of life 
(alpha->beta->release->security-fixes). That would at least eliminate 
the jumps.


Sven
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