Branches

[Daniel Morissette]

Howard Butler wrote:
> 
> With that in mind, what is people's opinion about developers creating 
> their own branches at will in a directory like ./sandbox?   Many other
> open source software projects use this pattern, with some even taking it 
> to the extreme that all work is done in a branch and merged back into 
> trunk.  I do not propose that we follow that development model because I 
> rather like having most activity in trunk -- it makes people aware of 
> the consequences of their actions on other folks and makes buildbot 
> testing simple.  However, it would be nice from time to time to have a 
> place to stuff experiments or do things that aren't mainstream 
> development with the option of easily bringing it in when it's ready.
> 

Does the "." in "./sandbox" imply that anyone could create sandbox 
subdirectories anywhere?

Or instead was teh intention to create a global "/sandbox" besides 
branches and tags at the top level where developers could create their 
own development branches?

I'd be okay with the creation of a global "/sandbox" area as an option 
for developers to create their own development branches if they like or 
need to do so.

However I'm not keen on requiring that all new development take place in 
private branches to be merged later. I fear that the complexity and cost 
of merging changes in the end would outweigh any benefit. We haven't had 
too much problems with people breaking the trunk build in the past 
anyway. I fully agree with you that having most activity in trunk "makes 
people aware of the consequences of their actions on other folks and 
makes buildbot testing simple."

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/