Using Subversion to manage change while preserving stability.

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

Alan D. Cabrera wrote:

> I would like to propose a moratorium on any changes to our
> infrastructure or our maven "architecture" until we have
> passed the TCK.

On the technical front, you can change how you are doing development, now
that you are using Subversion.  You can create a branch for the testing, or
for experimenting, or for preparing a release, and work out of there.  You
can even go so far as to have branches/{alan,dain,jeremy,...} if you were so
included.  The point is that you can WORK in source control, not just check
things in when you have something finished and tested.  You can do this
without stepping on each other, and have easy merges between branches.

For example, you can create a branch for managing the next release.  The
Release Manager can decide what goes in or not, and merge things from other
branches as desired.  No matter how much restructuring goes on in trunk or
someone else's branch, it won't effect that release branch.

	--- Noel

Re: Using Subversion to manage change while preserving stability.

[Jacek Laskowski <jl...@apache.org>]

Noel J. Bergman wrote:

> On the technical front, you can change how you are doing development, now
> that you are using Subversion.  You can create a branch for the testing, or
> for experimenting, or for preparing a release, and work out of there.  You
> can even go so far as to have branches/{alan,dain,jeremy,...} if you were so
> included.  The point is that you can WORK in source control, not just check
> things in when you have something finished and tested.  You can do this
> without stepping on each other, and have easy merges between branches.
> 
> For example, you can create a branch for managing the next release.  The
> Release Manager can decide what goes in or not, and merge things from other
> branches as desired.  No matter how much restructuring goes on in trunk or
> someone else's branch, it won't effect that release branch.

You can't imagine how excellent idea it is! Awesome! When I read it the 
first time, I thought why did nobody come up with this earlier (perhaps 
someone did, but never heard of it ;)). That's what should let others 
contribute who now don't feel too comfortable to do it easier. I don't 
want to see complaints about me breaking the main branch (which I think 
always should be stable enough at least to compile). It greatly lifts 
the burden of making sure everything works (that's however true until 
another developer jumps in and will depend on the branch, of course). 
Hmmm, the longer I write down the email the less the idea looks 
brilliant - I think I ought to cease here ;)

Let me see how to create the branch.....

> 	--- Noel

Jacek