[GRASS-dev] 6.3.0 backport question

[Hamish]

Markus Neteler wrote:
> I have seen a set of fixes in the CVS which haven't been backported
> yet.

Is there a policy for 6.3.0 backports? Bugfixes only? Minor fixes? New
features? Cool stuff? Everything?

> So far I didn't figure out the magic line to push a fix
> from HEAD to release branch.
> 
> Anyone who can teach me? Glynn once posted it but it didn't
> seem to work for me. 

Perhaps not the perfect way, but

- commit change in HEAD
- cd releasebranch_6_3/
- cvs co -r releasebranch_6_3 grass6/file/to/change
# IFF there has not been previous changes to the file in the branch
- cvs up -j HEAD grass6/file/to/change
- cvs diff grass6/file/to/change
- cvs commit grass6/file/to/change

If there have been prior changes to the branch you need to also specify the
release branch revision, as detailed in Glynn's prior post. Otherwise you get
conflicts during the merge. In those cases I admit that I usually revert to
doing a surgical edit in vi + cvs diff rather than try to make sense of the
mixed lineage. The downside is this requires a human & thus some level of human
error may be introduces.


> Certainly it would be better is *all* developers made use of
> the magic push line to avoid that others accidentally port
> irrelevant stuff or simply to save us/me time.

FWIW, my strategy has been to backport bug fixes only and if there are a series
of changes wait for the dust to settle and backport all the changes at once
instead of for each of a series of refinements. The downside is sometimes after
a couple of days of settled dust I forget about it...


For recent MS Windows fixes, I think it is ok for 6.3.0 to be considered alpha1
release, and 6.3.1 can be alpha2. Do we backport all DOS changes or split off
6.3.1(MS-alpha2) as another branch from HEAD?
 

Hamish



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