[Gdal-dev] RFC 3: GDAL Commiter Guildlines

[Marek Brudka]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Marek Brudka wrote:
>>
>> "New features or significant changes to existing source code should 
>> be commited to separate private branches. Merging to the main trunk 
>> is allowed only after testing them by separate developers on various 
>> platforms."
>>
>
> Ouch... I don't want to imagine what the SVN repository will look like 
> in a few years if we keep creating private branches for everything. 
> Even just one private branch per committer (and likely per committer 
> per software release) is likely to lead to quite a mess. 
I could show you such svn repo after 2 years in middle size company and 
believe me, nothing special happened there. In general creating 
developement branches is recommended practice both in csv and in svn.

> That's assuming I understood Mateusz' explanation right and branching 
> indeed means duplicating the whole directory tree on the server.
It's only a logical copy. Files and directories are physically copied on 
new commits only.
>
> Is it really common practive with SVN-based projects to create private 
> branches and merge like this? 
Yes, it is. Obviosly not for a single line patches, but for more serious 
works.
> Is this not abusing the features of the source code management system? 
Which features and how?
> Is there a way to physically delete a private branch from the SVN server
AFAIK no.
> and remove any trace from it in order to keep the repository clean?
What for? What does it mean clean?

Marek