launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[James Westby <jw+debian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed Dec 02 23:31:10 -0500 2009 Martin Pool wrote:
> That was a very insightful mail.  I don't really want to agree with
> your conclusion, but I don't want to for the reasons you said - that
> we know the problems we've seen in the past with branches.  Perhaps
> the best argument to do something differently is to see if it is in
> fact better, and then we could come back and apply that approach to
> branches.

Structuring it as an experiment is interesting. It does give you the
inconsistency for at least some time, and has some issues of it's
own, such as inertia to changing either side once the experiment
has commenced.

My other concern would be that it soon became “the way it works,”
rather than an experiment; that no-one would actually evaluate
after, say, six months which approach would be better for each.
There is also a danger than the inertia of changing the way branches
worked would mean that they remained the same, even if the recipe
approach proved better. Perhaps spending 10 minutes discussing how
branches could be transitioned would help if it was positioned as
an experiment.

> Perhaps there is a middle ground - at the moment you can have
> project-scope branches but only for series.  We could have some kind
> of concept of a team allowed to create recipes in the project
> namespace.

That could be very useful, c.f. official PPAs.

Thanks,

James