Do we need to create branches prior to releases? [Was : [Axis2][Vote] Create a branch for the Axis2 1.1 release]

[Eran Chinthaka <ch...@opensource.lk>]

Hi Bill,

Bill Nagy wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> There's actually a good description of the why and how's of creating a
> release branch in the Subversion book
> (http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn-book.html#svn.branchmerge.commonuses.patterns.release)

You've missed one important point there.

It says "developers need to keep writing new features while
quality-assurance teams take time to test supposedly-stable versions of
the software".

In Axis2 or any other Apache project, who are these quality assurance
people? They non-other than devs itself. So If devs have contributed
enough to this release, I hope they don't have enough time to implement
new features than testing the release :)


> 
> I don't understand why folks are saying that figuring out what goes
> where is tricky or that the work is that difficult.  I agree with dims
> that the RM should be in charge of creating the branch for the release
> -- that branch is then the RM's responsibility.  The RM gets to decide
> which bug fixes (or features I suppose) get added to the branch after it
> is made.
Seems one of us has not got Dims' point. IIUC, what he says is RM has
the "authority" to decide to create a branch or not AND if he creates it
he can decide when and how. What that means is he should be able to not
to create a branch, if he wants and then freeze the code and do the
release and then create the branch. Dims, I understood your statement
like that and that's why I agreed with it.


> 
> The RM, however, has no more of a vote than anyone else as to what gets
> placed into the trunk.  Bug fixes that are made to the release branch
> should most likely be committed to the trunk as well, but the RM doesn't
> have to be the one that does it.  (If another committer made the change
> to the release branch, then they should probably also commit the change
> to the trunk.)  
This is one of the problems I'm referring. When RM starts his release
process, and if some one commits to the release branch saying this
should go in to the release, RM is totally lost. RM might wanna decide
that it's known bug and go ahead with the release. But the committer
acts on his or her own discretion. When I vote for the RM, I give full
right him to decide about the code and what goes in the release.

> Moving changes between branches with subversion is
> relatively trivial, and, unless the release drags on, I can't imagine
> that the code bases will diverge that much.

Does this mean, if the release time is short you are happy even without
branches? Seems we are agreeing now. We only have four days between code
freeze and the release. And we all fight for that four days. Isn't it?

-- Chinthaka