kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Maciej Sumiński <maciej.suminski@xxxxxxx>]

We already have slightly diverged the branches, I think it shows that it
is hard to maintain two branches with cherry-picking. Details below:

Commits present in master, but not in 5.1:
commit c585964da98269db2cabf06daafb0b11cae3a4ec
    fix coding style issues.

commit 840ad7f68053d000dc6d46661d05d9d4be074704
    Add SH_ARC collisions

commit 01c5bdfb8f49a84f2e5fae5c7fc5729a47c8ef0f
    Fix bug with duplicate columns in Edit Symbol Fields.


Commits present in 5.1, but not in master:
commit 42deb68575a5a415b0970be4a89676f1986fa196
    Eeschema: minor fix in edit label dialog (incorrect unit value )

On 07/19/2018 07:08 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> This was pretty much how I saw the development working which is why I
> created a separate 5.1 branch.  However, if we are not going to allow
> new features to be merged into the master branch (6.0-dev) (and it seems
> that is the consensus) then I propose that we do all of the 5.1
> development in the master branch.  I would rather not delete the 5.1
> branch because the tags and version strings are already in place and
> reverting all the changes thus far would be painful.  Assuming 5.1 and
> master are currently the same, we can either merge from master to 5.1 as
> we go or one big merge when we are ready to start creating 5.1 release
> candidates.  I would prefer that we merge as we go which will keep the
> two branches synced an minimize issues.  Is this acceptable to everyone?
> 
> On 7/19/2018 12:15 PM, Carsten Schoenert wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> for me as a person which doesn't do any active source code development
>> on KiCad it looks like there is some confusion in the wild what will or
>> should happen in which branch.
>>
>> Sorry if I haven't get it until now, what are the goals of the branch
>> 5.1 the project wanted to archive?
>>
>> And what is 6.0, master or $(what else) are for?
>>
>> If these questions can be answered it will be much more clear what
>> development should happen in which branch and what should be merged into
>> which other branch.
>>
>> KiCad has now more active developers than ever I think, but I can't
>> really see a branch model that is fitting the current and future
>> situations. Out there are various branching models and the KiCad project
>> needs to decide which will work best for the project. The classical
>> master plus release branches isn't working great anymore if you want to
>> work on multiple parts in parallel.
>>
>> I suggest to have a look at the following website.
>>
>> https://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
>>
>> It describes what options are count and how a workflow would look like,
>> I think it would be also usable for KiCad (not in a full blown version).
>>
>> In the long term you wont do cherry-picking for the plain development as
>> this wont work smoothly at one point anymore (as Wayne already
>> mentioned). Single cherry-picking is fine, but in the end you will come
>> to merge commits as you mostly want to have all the new code in a later
>> release. Every upstream project I know is working this way.
>>
>> Backporting security or hot fixes are slightly different and require
>> often cherry-picking with small or much modifications as you wont
>> introduce new features into old code by merges. But also this can be
>> done in a local feature branch which gets merged then into the stable
>> release branch. Depends mostly on the amount of the needed backport.
>>
>> So to call it again, what is the branch 5.1 intended for? Only for the
>> GTK+3 fixes? If yes it's fine to do it here and merged these changes
>> (which will be needed also in the current ongoing nightly development)
>> into master, develop, 6.0 or what ever named branch. Just renaming
>> master into something different without a common and required workflow
>> is nothing, then it's really just another name.
>>
>> So I would propose the following as there are already some branches out
>> there which we all need to know and to handle.
>>
>> 5.0 will get all the fixes which will reflect in versions 5.0.x, commits
>> will mostly get cherry-picked from master. Hopefully not that much.
>>
>> 5.1 will get at least the GTK+3 adjustments and will finally cover all
>> versions 5.1.x (like 5.0 for 5.0.x). The GTK stuff is developed in this
>> branch and will be merged into master. Any other changes than GTK+3
>> which should be released with versions 5.1.x are also made here and get
>> merged into master.
>>
>> master is and will be the main nightly development channel. All changes
>> here are mainly for any releases greater than 5.x.x.
>>
>> This all are just my thoughts as I would like to see it, the above
>> suggestion is based on some experiences I have made with other projects
>> and work. Please remember that also the l10n and documentation trees are
>> related to this! The base for all future work for all side needs to be
>> clear early as possible.
>>
>> Anyhow ...
>>
>> (Hmm, I don't wanted to a top posting but my answer wasn't fitting to
>> any made statement.)
>>
>> Am 19.07.2018 um 17:19 schrieb Wayne Stambaugh:
>>> You are preaching to the choir.  I did most of the maintenance on the
>>> 4.0 branch.  Initially it was easy but it didn't take long for it to
>>> become a PITA.  If no one else objects, I would be more than happy to
>>> make that the policy.  If that is indeed what we want to do, I would
>>> delete the 5.1 branch.  It will push v6 development back significantly.
>>>
>>> On 7/19/2018 11:10 AM, Jon Evans wrote:
>>>> FWIW, as someone who is also maintaining parallel feature branches, I
>>>> agree with Orson and John.  Now that we have committed to this 5.1 idea,
>>>> we should just make it happen in master.  I think if we keep both master
>>>> and 5.1 branch running in parallel, inevitably one or the other of them
>>>> will be less tested / more broken unless people spend a bunch of time
>>>> doing the work of keeping them synchronized manually.  The cost of this
>>>> doesn't seem to outweigh the benefit of being able to merge some 6.0
>>>> features into master sooner.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 11:03 AM John Beard <john.j.beard@xxxxxxxxx
>>>> <mailto:john.j.beard@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 1:47 PM, Wayne Stambaugh
>>>>     <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>>>     > Unless we are going to prohibit new features (new file formats,
>>>>     new tool
>>>>     > framework for eeschema, etc.) from being merged into the dev branch
>>>>     > until 5.1 is released, I disagree.  If we want to only work on 5.1 in
>>>>     > the dev branch, then I'm OK with this proposal.
>>>>
>>>>     This is essentially my proposal - limit dev branch changes to 5.1
>>>>     features, uncontroversial maintenance and bugfixes.
>>>>
>>>>     If people want to work on features for 6 now, that can be done in
>>>>     separate branches, and the onus for keeping it rebased onto the 5.1
>>>>     changes is on them, rather than forcing the 5.1 workers to deal with
>>>>     conflicts. Otherwise, whoever is working on 5.1 features like the
>>>>     GTK3/GAL stuff and printing, will have to continually port their work
>>>>     between the two branches.
>>>>
>>>>     If 5.1 changes are unlikely to be substantially affected by 6.0-facing
>>>>     changes, then perhaps this limitation is not useful.
>>>>
>>>>     > There should be nothing in the 5.1 branch that is not also in the dev
>>>>     > branch so everything in the 5.1 branch should be tested in the dev
>>>>     > branch builds.
>>>>
>>>>     In theory, yes, but if fixes need to be manually ported as the
>>>>     branches diverge, it's possible to fail to fix, or break in new ways,
>>>>     one branch or the other. If a 5.1 branch exists in parallel to 6.0,
>>>>     someone will have to take responsibility to ensure the appropriate
>>>>     fixes are identified, ported and tested as needed. In the Linux world,
>>>>     this is the unglamorous, arduous (and vital) job of the stable branch
>>>>     maintainers.
>>>>
>>>>     I'm not against parallel branches if someone is willing to step up to
>>>>     be a stable branch maintainer for 5.1. In fact, I'd be thrilled to get
>>>>     nice new stuff dropping into the dev branch. However, changes that
>>>>     need to be in both branches are not trivially rebasable, that job will
>>>>     soon become decidedly not-fun.
>>>>
>>>>     Cheers,
>>>>
>>>>     John
>>
>>
> 
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