Greg Dickie wrote:
> I'm not saying "do not branch", I'm saying (most emphatically) "be careful why
> and how you branch".
Greg, I was not implying that you are against branching in *general*. I wanted my
question to be understood in the same context as your reply to John's original
"NT development" question. Your "Do not do this" sounds quite emphatic.
> Our branching ploicy in a nutshell is:
>
> - 1 branch per change (ie: each developper works on a private branch)
> - 1 branch per major development track ( so we may have 2 integration branches
> going for a product line , one maintenance stream and one next major release
> stream. The rules for keeping these synced is "merge early and often".
>
> What I meant was that branching to do ports is often a huge headache when you
> need to merge the branches at the end due to the nature of the changes. As I
> said, it's my 2 cents and definately YMMV.
YMMV - quite so. Some time ago I did a major target-oriented port, and merging was
indeed a nightmare. It was done with VMS/CMS, but things would not have been much
different with any other CM system. The point I was overlooking then was that
development on the main branch would go on, producing considerable changes to some
of the already ported files which occasionally defeated the merge algorithm.
But doing it on the main branch would have been impossible due to the complex
transformations required in some places and the impossibility of putting ports of
individual files back to main right away.
And, as you put it, "the nature of the changes" *may* indeed cause problems with
merge.
Thanks for the explanation,
-Wolfgang
>
>
> Greg
>
> On 03-Feb-00 Wolfgang Laun wrote:
> > Greg Dickie wrote:
> >
> >> My 2 cents. Do not do this. Branching for a platform port is bad and merging
> >> is
> >> almost impossible. It might be painful but try to stay in the same branch.
> >
> > Would you please be so kind and explain (briefly) why you advise against
> > branching? Or do you take this as a port where you burn your bridges, never
> > to
> > return?
> > Thank you,
> > -WLaun
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Greg
> >>
> >> On 03-Feb-00 John Lawlor wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi All,
> >> >
> >> > We are in the early stages of ClearCase and don't really use branches
> >> > until
> >> > now.
> >> >
> >> > One of the development groups wants to create a branch for doing NT
> >> > development work only and then merge it back in a few weeks (another
> >> > story).
> >> > The development group each use their own views.
> >> >
> >> > What is the best way to manage this branch?. All I have come up with so
> >> > far
> >> > is,
> >> > 1. Declare a branch type 'nt_development'
> >> > 2. Do a Cleartool mkbranch nt_development.
> >> >
> >> > These raise a few questions,
> >> > Can I branch the whole project or can I only do one file at a time?
> >> > If I get the developers to setup the views with these rules:
> >> > element * CHECKEDOUT
> >> > element * /main/nt_development/LATEST
> >> > element * /MAIN/1 -mkbranch nt_development
> >> > that will branch each file version onto this branch, but will I have to
> >> > merge the files back in 1 by 1?
> >> >
> >> > What is the best/smoothest way to get through this?
> >> >
> >> > All ideas are very very welcome.
> >> >
> >> > Regards,
> >> >
> >> > John.
> >> >
> >> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > http://clearcase.rational.com/cciug/mailing_list.html
> >>
> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> >> Greg Dickie
> >> Just A Guy*
> >> *from discreet (the logic is gone)
> >> Montreal
> >> (514) 954-7171
> >> greg@discreet.com
> >>
> >> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> http://clearcase.rational.com/cciug/mailing_list.html
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Greg Dickie
> Just A Guy*
> *from discreet (the logic is gone)
> Montreal
> (514) 954-7171
> greg@discreet.com
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
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