Group items tagged

it’s a bad idea in general to work on the master branch; experienced Git users typically work on separate development branches and then merge those branches into master when they’re done

Your local repository: The “right” way Keeping the big picture in mind, here are the commands I’ve run to set up my local repository (using the GitHub id long): $ git clone git://github.com/insoshi/insoshi.git $ cd insoshi $ git branch --track edge origin/edge $ git branch long edge $ git checkout long $ git remote add long git@github.com:long/insoshi.git $ git fetch long $ git push long long:refs/heads/long $ git config branch.long.remote long $ git config branch.long.merge refs/heads/long

You should note that the Git URL for the clone references the official Insoshi repository and not the URL of my own fork

Insoshi also has an ‘edge’ branch for changes that we want to make public but may require a bit more polishing before we’d consider them production-ready (in the past this has included migrating to Rails 2.1 and Sphinx/Ultrasphinx).  Our typical development lifecycle looks something like development -> edge -> master

I’m resisting the temptation to immediately start working on the local ‘master’ and ‘edge’ branches. I want to keep those in sync with the official Insoshi repository. I’ll keep my changes separate by creating a new branch ‘long’ that’s based off edge and checking it out

I’m starting my changes off of ‘edge’ since that contains all the latest updates and any contribution I submit a pull request for will be merged first into the official Insoshi ‘edge’ branch to allow for public testing before it’s merged into the ‘master’.

I’m finally adding the remote reference to my fork on GitHub

We should run a fetch immediately in order to sync up the local repository with the fork

I’m pushing up my new local branch up to my fork. Since it’ll be a new branch on the remote end, I need to fully specify the remote refspec

Now that the new branch is up on my fork, I want to set the branch configuration to track it

Setting the remote lets me just simply use $ git push to push changes on my development branch up to my fork

I’ve got a shell script for you.

The extra work is worth the effort, because with this configuration My changes will be easily identifiable in my named branch I can easily get updates from the main Insoshi repository Any updates I’ve pulled into master and edge are automatically pushed up to my fork on GitHub The last one is a bonus because the default refspec for remotes is refs/heads/*:refs/heads/*. This means that the simple ‘git push’ command will push up changes for all local branches that have a matching branch on the remote. And if I make it a point to pull in updates to my local master and edge but not work directly on them, my fork will match up with the official repository.

So what is the benefit of all this to open source projects like Insoshi? The easier it is for the contributor to pull in updates, the more likely it will be that the pull request will be for code that merges easily with the latest releases (with few conflicts) You can tell if someone is pulling updates by looking at their master and edge branches and seeing if they match up with the latest branches on the main repository By getting contributors in the habit of working on branches, you’re going to get better organized code contributions Basically, the less effort that’s required to bring in code via a pull request, the sooner it can be added to the project release. And at the end of the day, that’s really what it’s all about.

Companies have their schedules and obligations, and what is stable for one user or developer is unsuitable for another.

Together with new tools for collaborating, new development models are emerging.

And we have an increased need for flexible and efficient collaboration with third parties and other Free Software projects.

KDE's development process should be agile, distributed, and trunk freezes should be avoided when possible.

We should set up a process aimed at adaptation and flexibility, a process optimized for unplanned change.

Currently, our release cycle is limiting, up to the point of almost strangling our development cycle.

Our current release process, depicted in the graphic below, can be described as using technical limitations to fix what is essentially a social issue: getting people into "release mode".

many developers complain about Subversion making it hard to maintain "work branches" (branches of the code that are used to develop and stabilize new features or larger changes in the code), subsequent code merges are time-consuming and an error-prone process.

The proposal would essentially remove these limitations, instead relying on discipline in the community to get everyone on the same page and focus on stability. To facilitate this change, we need to get the users to help us: a testing team establishing a feedback cycle to the developers about the quality and bugs. Using a more distributed development model would allow for more flexibility in working in branches, until they are stabilized enough to be merged back to trunk. Trunk, therefore, has to become more stable and predicable, to allow for branching at essentially any point in time. A set of rules and common understanding of the new role of trunk is needed. Also, as the switch to a distributed version control system (which is pretty much mandatory in this development model) is not as trivial as our previous change in revision control systems, from CVS to Subversion. Good documentation, best practice guides, and the right infrastructure is needed.

KDE's current system of alpha, beta and release candidate releases will be replaced by a system which has three milestones:

The Publish Milestone This is the moment we ask all developers to publish the branches they want to get merged in trunk before the release. Of course, it is important to have a good overview of the different branches at all times to prevent people from duplicating work and allow testers to help stabilize things. But the "Publish Milestone" is the moment to have a final look at what will be merged, solve issues, give feedback and finally decide what will go in and what not.

The Branch Milestone This is the moment we branch from trunk, creating a tree which will be stabilized over the next couple of months until it is ready for release.

The "tested" milestone represents the cut-off date. Features that do not meet the criteria at this point will be excluded from the release. The resulting codebase will be released as KDE 4.x.0 and subsequently updated with 4.x.1, 4.x.2, etc. It might be a good idea to appoint someone who will be the maintainer for this release, ensuring timely regular bugfix releases and coordinating backports of fixes that go into trunk.

Under discussion are ideas like having some kind of "KDE-next" tree containing the branches which will be merged with trunk soon; or maybe have such trees for each sub-project in KDE. Another question is which criteria branches have to meet to get merged into the "new" trunk.

Having a page on TechBase advertising the different branches (including a short explanation of their purpose and information about who's responsible for the work) will go a long way in ensuring discoverability of the now-distributed source trees.