On 11/17/06, Bertrand Delacretaz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
IIUC the agreed way of working is to do all important changes as patches in Jira, discuss them and only commit once we agree on them?
AFAIK this is not a formal or informal policy, but a combination of convention and happenstance.
If this is the case (and I agree with the idea of having a stable trunk at all times), I'd like to suggest working with SVN branches instead - or in addition to this. IMHO, the problem with patches is that they tend to be one-man shows: patching someone's patch is not convenient, so others tend to just comment on them. With SVN branches, several people can go wild in a branch, fixing or improving other's stuff at will while it's being worked on. This includes non-committers, who can provide patches against the branches and get involved on experimental stuff as well. And if a branch takes some time to complete, merging can occur in both directions (branch -> trunk or trunk -> branch) to keep things in sync easily.
+1 on using branches, at least some of the time. They are helpful for larger-impact changes in my experience. I don't know if we should abandon patches entirely, as they do a have a few advantages for smaller-impact changes: - clear "owner" of a single issue - since all modifications go through a single person, they can assess the global impact of every modification - less clutter on commit mailing list (these are all relatively minor points, and branches have procedural benefits too) -Mike
