Hi, This is a proposal how to handle the feature and release branches in the LibreOffice git repos.
Terms ----- "Release branch" - branch that is used for a release of a version, like when we start stabilizing 3.3, we'll create libreoffice-3-3 branch, and only fixes targeting 3.3 are supposed to go there. "Feature branch" - branch used for development of a larger feature, rework, or a bugfix, that needs a stable repo for a while, and not tons of commits floating in every few minutes. Layout ------ Release branches are trivial - they must be in the main repo. The feature branches (in principle) do not have to be - they can be handled in 'personal repositories' on freedesktop, see http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Infrastructure/git/RepositoryAdmin Nevertheless, there was agreement on the IRC that we will allow feature branches even in the main repos; but in that case, they have to be prefixed with 'feature/' prefix. Also, the creator of the branch is supposed to remove it when it is merged into master (or into a release branch). Release branches have no prefix. So, the list of the branches could look like the following: feature/comments-rework ... feature/something-removal feature/supermegafeature libreoffice-3-3 libreoffice-4 master Merging a feature branch ------------------------ When you want to merge a feature branch into the master, you have 2 possibilities - either rebase it over the current master, or merge it. The former gets us a nicer history (less merges), but more work on your side. On the other hand, the latter is safer (and easier) when the feature branch was open for quite some time, and lots of work has been done there. So, after having done a 'g checkout master', you want to do: bin/g rebase master feature/yourbranch or bin/g merge feature/yourbranch Note: When you decide for merge, and your push fails, you _have_to_ use bin/g pull --no-rebase to get the latest changes, because with 'g pull -r' you'd fallback to the former possibility - rebase. Even though we encourage 'git pull -r' policy for single commits, merge of the feature branches is the recommended way; we have to do full merges in case of the integrating the OOo milestones anyway. Removal of the feature branch ----------------------------- When integrated, you remove the feature branch by bin/g -f push :feature/yourbranch [The -f is not necessary if the branch is present in all the repos.] I hope this works for everyone :-) - please comment if not. Regards, Kendy _______________________________________________ LibreOffice mailing list LibreOffice@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice
