[spambayes-dev] More CVS branch/tags questions

[Skip Montanaro]

    Richie> From looking at the logs, it seems you're right, Mark - bugfixes
    Richie> have been hitting the head instead of release_1_0.  Also, some
    Richie> fixes have been committed to both the head and release_1_0,
    Richie> which will probably make merging release_1_0 back onto the head
    Richie> a pain - you always get more conflicts when you do that.

My take on this is that at this point in time we should not be working on
any branches.  Everything should happen on the trunk until a release is
about the be cut, at which point a branch is made, then frozen except for
crucial bug fixes.  Once the release is complete, the branch dies (or at
best any changes it contains which are not on the trunk are merged back into
the trunk).  After we've actually had a 1.0 release, we create a branch
called something like release10_maint, to which bug fixes are backported
from the trunk.  At some point in time, that branch also dies (probably
fairly quickly, after a 1.1 or 1.2 release).

This is more-or-less how the Python development works.  The advantage from
my standpoint is that most developers can be content to only check in
changes to the trunk and occasionally backport their changes (if they are
bug fixes) to an obvious branch.  The only people who have to worry much
about branches are release managers.  Branches leading up to a release are
very short-lived.

Skip