Christopher Faylor wrote:
On Thu, Sep 08, 2005 at 06:23:16PM +0100, Max Bowsher wrote:
Brian Dessent wrote:
However, I think the larger question is do we *really* need a release
branch? I only did it this time because it seems to be established
procedure, but I see no real reason to continue it. I guess it made
sense in prior times when there were destabilising changes being made on
HEAD, but is this something that's still relevent?
I think it is always worthwhile creating a release branch, because it is
trivial to do at the time, but more awkward to do retroactively.
I would, however, not bother to bump the ChangeLog revision on the branch
just to make the version number change - so, I would have released 2.510,
and the first bugfix would then be 2.510.2.1.
The reason for creating the branch is that it gives you the option to
make
a minimal workaround on the branch, and release quickly, whilst working
on
a better-designed fix on trunk, should it be necessary.
You can accomplish the same thing by tagging the trunk and then
branching later, if you need to do that.
A branch is just a special kind of tag, so we might as well just do a
branch-tag in the first place.
If this was a project with lots of activity and lots of developers, I
could see branching. It just seems like an inconvenience in this case.
Regardless of any other factors, it's nice to have a record in CVS of what
we released.
And, there should be no inconvenience beyond the one command to make the
branchtag.
Max.