[Opensim-dev] to branch or to break?

[Sean Dague]

On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 02:30:53PM +0100, Stefan Andersson wrote:
> I'm totally for letting trunk be 'always buildable but maybe not
> always functioning' - if people are concerned with stability they
> should start tag revisions as 'stable' - and tell people to use that.
>  
> Given how simple it is to tag revisions, it's amazing we don't do
> it. What lazy asses we are.
> 
> For example, at the moment, apparently osgrid can't be pushed past
> 2060, which means the regions on it can't be pushed past 2204 -
>  
> as much as we all want osgrid to move forward, we should really tag
> 2060 as osgrid-stable-grid-0.4 and 2204 as osgrid-region stable-0.4
> and tell all people on osgrid to use THAT instead of trunk until we
> figure out what the hell is wrong.

Though, we won't figure out what is wrong if everyone hangs back at safe
versions.

> Also, if we want to supply some kind of stable experience, we should
> start _branching_ as well, bugfixing for that branch and selectively
> merge the bugfix back into trunk. You want stability or latest
> features? You can't have both.

I really think history has shown that merging + svn = more pain and
agony than anyone really can put up with.

> The situation we have now with the core devs (newbs and oldes)
> tip-toeing around, being afraid to introduce bugs, because anybody
> could be expected to pull trunk and run it is just absurd. Also, it
> leads to n00bs like myself not being able to learn by 'trial and
> error' because we don't tolerate error. And yes, I do mean 'trial by
> error' by committing - bughunting should be a community effort and
> thus a community learning experience.

Keeping the quality of trunk high is more important on the development
front than the user front.  We've got 13 committers now, all working on
different schedules.  If someone breaks trunk in a bad way, the other 12
can't get things done.  Mistakes happen, but testing prior to commit
really needs to become part of our mantra if we're going to continue to
work as productively with so many developers. :)

     -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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