[python-committers] [PSF-Members] Code Simplicity » Open Source Community, Simplified

[Nick Coghlan]

On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Le jeudi 03 février 2011 à 22:04 +1000, Nick Coghlan a écrit :
>> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Jesus Cea <jcea at jcea.es> wrote:
>> > In fact, "up-porting" is usually better, because you don't have to think
>> > if you must downport or not. Versión "n+1" is always a superset of
>> > versión "n". So you "up-port" *ALWAYS*, automatically (mostly) via merge.
>>
>> As I said, I'm happy to roll with the proposed workflow as documented
>> in the PEP, based on the advice from experts that Mercurial doesn't
>> really suit our current work flow. I'm just noting that I expect the
>> result will be fewer fixes in maintenance branches, since it is harder
>> to divide the tasks of implementing a fix for the main line of
>> development and applying that fix to the maintenance branches (unlike
>> the way it often happens now).
>
> I share the concern that it will make things harder for contributors
> (right now they only have to care about the feature branch).

One useful thing I have personally gotten out of this discussion is to
identify the core reason I feel backporting is the "right" way to
handle maintenance branches: it ensures that the *tests* that confirm
a bug has been fixed are always applied to the *latest* branch first.
This means that there should never be regressions of tested bug fixes,
even after a major version upgrade. When fixes and their associated
tests are applied to the oldest branch first, the only thing ensuring
the forward port isn't forgotten is manual review, thus opening the
door to regressions following a major version upgrade.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia