[GNC-dev] Git branches

[john]

David,

Unfortunately that's ambiguous without explaining that in that particular context release means major release series. In ordinary usage the current release is 4.12; it can't get any more commits. The next release is 4.13 and will release off what we now call the maint branch.

Regards,
John Ralls


> On Nov 14, 2022, at 10:05 AM, David T. via gnucash-devel <gnucash-devel at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> Not that my opinion carries much weight on this, but "current-release" and "next-release" might be a reasonable set of options that are less wordy but still clear?
> ⁣
> David T.​
> 
> On Nov 14, 2022, 19:17, at 19:17, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
>> This had been brewing in my mind as well, so thanks for bringing this
>> up.
>> 
>> When I considered alternative branch names I initially thought of
>> "stable" vs "development" 
>> or "devel" with an optional "unstable" at times of pre-releases. 
>> 
>> However when thinking this through some more I started wondering
>> whether we really 
>> should limit ourselves to just two (or three) branch names.
>> 
>> We could also name our branches "4.x", "5.x" and so on to indicate the
>> release series this 
>> branch is for. At some point we just stop using the older branches. We
>> can choose to drop 
>> them or just leave them in the git history as it suits is best.
>> 
>> Both naming schemes have advantages and drawbacks. I like the direct
>> relationship 
>> between branch name and releases that will be on it for the latter
>> scheme. Although I admit 
>> this relationship doesn't hold for the pre-releases, unless we make
>> that a separate branch for 
>> those like eg "4.9xx".
>> 
>> Regards,
>> 
>> Geert
>> 
>> Op zondag 13 november 2022 21:40:14 CET schreef john:
>>> Since Geert brought up our relationship with Github I thought it
>> timely to
>>> start a discussion about a related trend: The name of the git
>> repository's
>>> primary branches. There's an ongoing effort in the software
>> development
>>> community for the last 25-30 years or so to remove the terms master
>> and
>>> slave; originally when used together (as in processes) but more
>> recently
>>> when used alone. This recently includes the name of the primary
>> branch in a
>>> git repository. The Gitlab folks have a nice summary at
>>> 
>> https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2021/03/10/new-git-default-branch-name/.
>>> 
>>> 'Master' was the standard when we started using git 10 years ago and
>> so we
>>> adopted it and still use it. Aside from the cultural sensitivity
>> issues
>>> (primarily in the United States because of our unfortunate history
>> with
>>> forced importation and enslavement of Africans) it has proved to be a
>> bit
>>> confusing to new contributors.
>>> 
>>> The new standard default is 'main'. I think that would be fine for
>> htdocs
>>> where we have master and beta: Main would better express that that's
>> the
>>> branch that you see when you visit https://www.gnucash.org
>>> <https://www.gnucash.org/>. The gnucash-on-foo repositories for the
>> build
>>> processes have only master branches so it doesn't really matter what
>> the
>>> branch is called.
>>> 
>>> I don't think 'main' is the right name for gnucash or gnucash-docs
>> because
>>> it does nothing about the confusion factor. Note that the default
>> branch on
>>> those two is maint but we still use master for the next major
>> release's
>>> branch. The most expressive titles would be current-major-release and
>>> next-major-release but they're a bit wordy; OTOH just current (or
>> curr) and
>>> next leave a new contributor to ask current and next what? maint is
>> concise
>>> and not terrible for a branch that gets only bug fixes and small
>> features.
>>> Lots of generic names for the next-major-release branch (future,
>> devel or
>>> development, major-change) come to mind but I'm not sure that any of
>> them
>>> clearly express the intent of the branch.
>>> 
>>> Comments?
>>> 
>>> Regards,
>>> John Ralls
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> gnucash-devel mailing list
>>> gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>> 
>> 
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