On Wed, Dec 01, 2004 at 10:04:43PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Andrew Dunstan" <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> > I've raised this before, but would like to suggest again that there might be
> > virtue in branching earlier in the dev cycle - maybe around the time of the
> > first beta.
>
> Given the amount of patching that's gone on, branching 8.1 earlier would
> have meant a great deal more work for the committers, in the form of
> double-patching stuff.
That's because of CVS. Other systems deal with this issues in a more
committer-friendly manner.
You just have to look at how using BitKeeper has dramatically increased
the development going on at the Linux kernel. Whatever your opinion is
on Linux itself, that change alone is something to consider.
Also, committers are not the only users of our SCM tool. Consider the
autovacuum-backend-integration patch. Nobody reviewed it because it's a
lot of hassle to take the patch, apply it locally, test it, and continue
development. Because if later Matthew comes up with an updated patch,
the reviewer has trouble merging both things, and re-reviewing the new
patch ("did he change this in the new patch, or is it the same as
before?"). Branching the whole thing could mean that I can integrate
his own change history in my private tree, so I can see what went on
since the last time; and he can see what changes I did and merge it;
etc. The final step, which would be your own review and integration
into the official tree, has a better patch to begin with. Which is the
way Linux works.
I think I will start using Subversion to track Postgres, just to see how
it goes.
--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[@]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"If it wasn't for my companion, I believe I'd be having
the time of my life" (John Dunbar)