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Posted to users@subversion.apache.org by Matt England <me...@mengland.net> on 2006/03/28 18:16:58 UTC
Best practice Q: when is it necessary to branch?
Hello,
I have what I call a "best practice" question:
When is it necessary (or at least useful) to branch?
Here's my current answers (or at least how my group has been operating thus
far):
1) When one needs to do "side"/private development in a way that breaks the
day-to-day builds of the trunk.
2) When one needs to make bug fixes of an old revision/tag of the repo
(possibly by back-merging fixes/features in a future revision) without
inheriting all the new stuff in the trunk.
Is this a comprehensive and concise list?
I realize this is a rather broad question (and possibly a faq somewhere),
but I'm rather short on research time at the moment, so I seek guidance
from the community.
I believe I want to minimize the number of branches made in my repos,
although I feel like I want to tag often (I review a "tag" simply as an
alias to a svnversion number--sort of a read-only branch). Is this, too, a
reasonable and effective approach?
Thanks for any comments,
-Matt
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Re: Best practice Q: when is it necessary to branch?
Posted by Jacob Atzen <ja...@aub.dk>.
On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 12:16:58PM -0600, Matt England wrote:
> I have what I call a "best practice" question:
>
> When is it necessary (or at least useful) to branch?
>
> Here's my current answers (or at least how my group has been operating thus
> far):
>
> 1) When one needs to do "side"/private development in a way that breaks the
> day-to-day builds of the trunk.
I think of branches as something to use whenever you feel that you will
restrain yourself from committing because you don't want to create
trouble for others.
> 2) When one needs to make bug fixes of an old revision/tag of the repo
> (possibly by back-merging fixes/features in a future revision) without
> inheriting all the new stuff in the trunk.
Agreed.
> Is this a comprehensive and concise list?
I'm sure there's plenty of more use cases for branches, but I believe
these are the two primary.
> I believe I want to minimize the number of branches made in my repos,
> although I feel like I want to tag often (I review a "tag" simply as an
> alias to a svnversion number--sort of a read-only branch). Is this, too, a
> reasonable and effective approach?
With Subversions cheap copies there's no problem in tagging away.
--
Cheers,
- Jacob Atzen
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Re: Best practice Q: when is it necessary to branch?
Posted by Duncan Murdoch <mu...@stats.uwo.ca>.
On 3/28/2006 1:16 PM, Matt England wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have what I call a "best practice" question:
>
> When is it necessary (or at least useful) to branch?
>
> Here's my current answers (or at least how my group has been operating thus
> far):
>
> 1) When one needs to do "side"/private development in a way that breaks the
> day-to-day builds of the trunk.
>
> 2) When one needs to make bug fixes of an old revision/tag of the repo
> (possibly by back-merging fixes/features in a future revision) without
> inheriting all the new stuff in the trunk.
>
> Is this a comprehensive and concise list?
>
> I realize this is a rather broad question (and possibly a faq somewhere),
> but I'm rather short on research time at the moment, so I seek guidance
> from the community.
>
> I believe I want to minimize the number of branches made in my repos,
> although I feel like I want to tag often (I review a "tag" simply as an
> alias to a svnversion number--sort of a read-only branch). Is this, too, a
> reasonable and effective approach?
There's no real need to minimize the number of branches. If you want a
temporary branch, just delete it after you're done, and it won't clog up
your repository directory listings. It will still take up space in the
repository, and it will be possible to recover it unless you take
administrator action to remove it.) The only other cost of creating a
useless branch is that your logs end up longer.
Duncan Murdoch
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Re: Best practice Q: when is it necessary to branch?
Posted by Noel Yap <no...@gmail.com>.
Comprehensive answer: http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/acme/branching/
Caveat: IMNSHO, there's absolutely no need for a _developer_, as
opposed to _development_, branch.
HTH,
Noel
On 3/28/06, Matt England <me...@mengland.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have what I call a "best practice" question:
>
> When is it necessary (or at least useful) to branch?
>
> Here's my current answers (or at least how my group has been operating thus
> far):
>
> 1) When one needs to do "side"/private development in a way that breaks the
> day-to-day builds of the trunk.
>
> 2) When one needs to make bug fixes of an old revision/tag of the repo
> (possibly by back-merging fixes/features in a future revision) without
> inheriting all the new stuff in the trunk.
>
> Is this a comprehensive and concise list?
>
> I realize this is a rather broad question (and possibly a faq somewhere),
> but I'm rather short on research time at the moment, so I seek guidance
> from the community.
>
> I believe I want to minimize the number of branches made in my repos,
> although I feel like I want to tag often (I review a "tag" simply as an
> alias to a svnversion number--sort of a read-only branch). Is this, too, a
> reasonable and effective approach?
>
> Thanks for any comments,
> -Matt
>
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org
>
>
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Re: Best practice Q: when is it necessary to branch?
Posted by William Nagel <bi...@stagelogic.com>.
On Mar 28, 2006, at 1:16 PM, Matt England wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have what I call a "best practice" question:
>
> When is it necessary (or at least useful) to branch?
>
> Here's my current answers (or at least how my group has been
> operating thus far):
>
> 1) When one needs to do "side"/private development in a way that
> breaks the day-to-day builds of the trunk.
>
> 2) When one needs to make bug fixes of an old revision/tag of the
> repo (possibly by back-merging fixes/features in a future revision)
> without inheriting all the new stuff in the trunk.
>
> Is this a comprehensive and concise list?
I'd say that it covers the majority of common branching use cases,
but I wouldn't say it's comprehensive.
>
> I realize this is a rather broad question (and possibly a faq
> somewhere), but I'm rather short on research time at the moment, so
> I seek guidance from the community.
I talk about branching in chapters 5, 9, and 12 of my book. I think
you'd find a lot of info along the lines of what you're looking for
in there: http://www.williamnagel.net/svn.php
-Bill
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