branchs and tags and merges oh my!

[servilio]

On 1 July 2011 19:47, David Bremner <david at tethera.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:48:24 -0700, Keith Packard <keithp at keithp.com> wrote:
>> > 2) merge master onto the release branch
>>
>> This makes doing 'bug fix' stuff on top of 0.6 a bit more challenging.
>
> Can you elaborate? Naively it seems like one ends up with the same kind
> of spur of history off of the 0.6 tag in both cases.
>
> ----.--------------master
>    \
>     ---- 0.6 ---- bugfix
>
> versus
>
> -----.----------.
>      \          \
>       ---- 0.6--------master
>             \
>              ----- bugfix
>
>> As an alternative, you probably should have simply put non-release
>> patches on a separate 'feature branch' (probably residing in the feature
>> author's repository) which would then be merged onto master post-0.6
>
> Yes, that is certainly nice from a git history point of view. On the
> other hand the point of separating the roles of feature merger from
> release mechanic was to allow Carl more time to work on merging features
> into master, and I'm not sure how turning master over to the release
> manager helps that.

What about having Carl do the merging of features into a develop
branch[1], then the release manager prepares a release in a release
branch, merging back and tagging into master when release is ready? A
similar workflow could be followed for bugfix releases (branch to
bugfix/release branch, prepare, merge back to master, tag).

This workflow would keep a nice useful history while allowing even
more independence between the feature merging and release process,
what do you think?

Servilio

[1] Or next, or whatever other name is better understood by the community.