new development branch, temporary-21-5, is sort of open
After a couple of weeks of study and procrastination, I have some idea
of how CVS branching works. Since we still don't have a consensus on
how to do The Great Trunk Exchange[1], and there are some people who
have stuff they have requested to be committed to the new devel
branch, I'm implementing the stopgap procedure described below.
(1) I have created a (redundant) branch point tag at r21-2-44:
`temporary_21_5_bp_eq_Thalia'. This is purely for documentary
purpose.
(2) I have created a branch rooted at that tag: `temporary-21-5'.[2]
(3) Martin has been active the last few days and into this evening, as
usual, and there have been a number of other commits since
"Thalia", including Matt Tucker's most recent syntax fixes.
_These are not yet synched_ so a checkout of `temporary-21-5'
_will_ be D.O.A.
(4) Within 48 hours I will get this branch merged to release-21-2
current state, and make an announcement when that's done. After
that point, commits to `temporary-21-5' will be according to the
usual "unstable" rules. If you have a patch which is
inappropriate for the "frozen" branch 21.2, please label it "for
21.5".
Patches directed to 21.2 may be diverted to 21.5 by the Release
Manager, as has been discussed before.
Bug fixes will of course continue to be accepted for 21.1, subject
to Vin Shelton's approval, until acceptance of 21.4 as "stable" by
both the Review Board and Vin Shelton (as Stable Release
Engineer).
Of course work on packages and xemacsweb are in no way affected by
this.
(5) As Release Manager, I will be responsible for making sure that
patches to the 21.2 branch get merged to 21.5. I will try to do
a merge every 48 hours at the outside. (I think; there are some
nitty issues about tagging and efficiency in merging that I don't
have experience with yet. It may be preferable to synchronize
merges with beta releases on the 21.2 branch.)
(6) Ben and Bill (and anybody else with huge pending merges): please
consult with Martin regarding merging Mule/NT and XEmacs/GTK into
the new devel branch. I would suppose its best to do those one at
a time with some settling time between them. But that's just my
private opinion, plus a little extra emphasis since it is somebody
else's territory that I'm opening a door to.
To access the new branch, use the -r temporary-21-5 flag. You can use
cvs update to switch a current CVS unstable tree over to the new devel
branch. NB: at the current time this will take you backward to the
state as of the release of 21.2.44 "Thalia", and you will have to
merge from release-21-2 to temporary-21-5. (I personally think the
only excuse for doing this immediately is to attempt to mask a
testosterone deficiency, since there really won't be much if any new
code on that branch, that is not available on 21.2, for a couple of
weeks.)
Footnotes:
[1] It would be really helpful if people who understand CVS well
could make and discuss some proposals about the trunk move. The
primary goal is to make the trunk the devel branch. We would like to
minimize disruption (one estimate was that we should be prepared for
CVS to be down for a whole day and do a complete backup first). The
tertiary goal would be to maintain continuity of CVS history.
Probably the earliest we could think about doing this is mid-March.
[2] The ugly awkward name is intentional. It will make people bitch
loudly until we actually do The Great Trunk Move.
--
University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________
What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."