Branches

[Frank Warmerdam]

Sean Gillies wrote:
> It's only easy to merge changes back into the trunk if people keep their 
> sandboxes regularly updated against changes to the trunk. I learned this 
> the hard way.
> 
> Sandboxes would be good. RFC branches might also be worth some 
> consideration. There is already some consensus about what does and does 
> not require an RFC, and the same guidelines could be applied to what 
> does or does not go straight into the trunk.

Sean / Howard,

I am leery about extensive use of extra branches, and my second-hand experience
of them in geotools is that they can lead to substantial divergence that is
hard to put back together again.

In GDAL I have introduced what is essentially a vendor branch I manage
privately in the gdal tree.  In this case it relieved substantial pressure
I was under to migrate new features back into the stable branch and gave me
a place I could test integration easily.  So I can hardly object to some use
of private branches in MapServer.

I am mildly against extensive use of branches for developing new features.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org