branches

Hello BASIN group,

As we prepare to move our scm from cvs to subversion, I have a
suggestion that I'd like to bring up. I think it would be beneficial
if we started using braches as part of our development process.

Perhaps the simplest branch philosophy that we could begin to use is
to maintain a stable trunk for code that is more or less production
worthy and a branch for active development. In other words the code
at the trunk should be fairly stable such that someone checking it
out should expect it to compile and work. Experimental code and the
bleeding edge of edits should go in the branch.

The branch is where a developer can put code as a sort of sandbox.
People not interested in working with the latest experimental, would
just look at the trunk. Others who are working on the newest features
would work with the branch.

I think this approach will provide more granularity and
accountability in our repository. For instance a developer would be
able to check in code that may not be ready to be shared with the
rest of the group, ie work from day to day and week to week. This way
the developer can track the evolution of a feature, roll back edits,
and so on.

If anyone has opinions or thoughts on this, please send them my way.

Thanks,
~Doug
Received on Wed Nov 29 20:32:20 2006