Dear all, On this mailing-list we have previously discussed permitting branching within the gem5 repo under certain circumstances. While I believe many were in favor of this to some extent, I want to keep this topic open for discussion to ensure the community is comfortable with any changes.
I've started a Gerrit change which updates CONTRIBUTING.md to state when branching is permitted and what should be done. I encourage anyone with a stake in this decision to contribute to the review (even a positive review is good feedback). https://gem5-review.googlesource.com/c/public/gem5/+/24263 In short, at the time of writing, the policy is: - Branching is permitted under circumstances where a change is assumed to be large and/or developed over a long period of time, in which contributing commits gradually does not make much sense. We'll also permit branching if there is a decent case that a feature/improvement should be held back until some future release (i.e., not the upcoming release, but one after). - A branch can only be created by project maintainers. If a branch is required, a maintainer must be asked to create one (ideally, the maintainer of the relevant component). They will use their own discretion to decide whether it is necessary, taking into account the general policy. - Once the feature/improvement is complete, the branch shall be merged then deleted. To address previous criticisms of this idea, I've attempted to word this policy in a manner which emphasises that branching should be used sparingly, with contribution to the master (soon "develop") branch being the normal way to contribute to gem5. "Dead" branches will not be tolerated, so I've emphasised that branches considered abandoned by their developers may be deleted. Kind regards, Bobby -- Dr. Bobby R. Bruce Room 2235, Kemper Hall, UC Davis Davis, CA, 95616 web: https://www.bobbybruce.net _______________________________________________ gem5-dev mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/mailman/listinfo/gem5-dev
