Re: patch vs. overwrite in bzr

[Paul Eggert]

On 04/04/2012 06:20 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> This is because we do not believe we have the manpower to keep two
> active branches, and that most people would just keep on using the
> `trunk' rather than help debug the feature-frozen branch.

As it happens I made a similar point in a lecture in my undergrad
software engineering course yesterday, and used Emacs 24 development
as the example!  Real-world software engineering often differs from
textbook assumptions of unlimited development resources.

> I would be open to experiment with the alternative,

If the trunk were unfrozen, I confess that I'd probably make almost all
my changes to the trunk.  Debugging is less fun, at least for this
volunteer.  But the alternative might be a good idea anyway, as
it might encourage more contributions overall while maintaining
an acceptably low defect rate in the production version.