[jbosscache-dev] Branch and tag maintenance

[Jason T. Greene]

Manik Surtani wrote:
> 
> On 24 Aug 2007, at 04:21, Brian Stansberry wrote:
> 
>> Sorry; couldn't connect to mail server the other day and forgot to 
>> resend. Couple comments:
>>
>> 1) Release qualifiers are dot appended, so using "2.1.0-GA" instead of 
>> "2.1.0.GA" is confusing.
> 
> This seems to be a maven convention.  Maven detects -SNAPSHOT and treats 
> it differently from -GA, -BETA, etc. (different snapshot repo, etc)

Only -SNAPSHOT is the maven convention, everything else uses normal 
dots, which IMO we should use since it nice matches our version numbers.

>> 2) Not sure why you'd include the release qualifier in the branch 
>> name, unless the intent was to stop work on that branch when the named 
>> qualifier was reached. E.g. when 2.1.0.Alpha1 is tagged, will work on 
>> branch 2.1.0.Alpha1 stop, with work then beginning on 2.1.0.Alpha2? (I 
>> hope not, as that means doing a new checkout or jumping through other 
>> hoops.)
>>
> 
> The purpose is that some branches are made off a specific SP.  E.g., 
> https://svn.jboss.org/repos/jbosscache/core/branches/1.2.4-SP2
> 
> Perhaps this should be the anomaly and the norm being to drop the 
> release qualifier?  I thought this was a bit confusing too, releasing 
> 1.4.1-SP5 off branches/1.4.0-GA.

Yes, I thought this was odd as well. IMO the branch source is 
irrelevant, its what the intended releases are that matter. The 
convention I have always used in past projects is that your branch is 
always one component off from where you intend to do releases. Here are 
some examples.

branches/1.4 - Branch for any 1.4.X release

branches/1.4.0 - Short Lived Branch for 1.4.0.X (CR, GA, SP) releases

Also keep in mind that with subversion, branches tend to be short lived, 
and so purged from time to time. They can always be recreated by just 
copying from some tag, which has the full history.

-- 
Jason T. Greene
Lead, POJO Cache
JBoss, a division of Red Hat