Re: Next release from master

[Barry Fishman]

On 2016-01-23 00:17:07 -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> Irrespective of what the policy is, I think you will find most people
>> that check out Emacs build from the master branch.
>
> IIUC your proposal aims specifically at making sure that the focus of
> work is always on "the same branch", so uses don't need to ask here
> whether they should be using emacs-25 or master: we arrange our workflow
> such that "master" corresponds to "the branch we currently want normal
> users to test&debug".
>
> I think this makes a lot of sense, but it basically requires always
> having 2 active branches (master and next, currently corresponding to
> emacs-25 and master), whereas until now we've always had longish periods
> of time where we only have 1 active branch (which we call master but
> would be called "next" in your proposal).

I was just following the approach somewhat like that used by some Linux
package managers.  For example with Debian the "master" branch would
work like Debian's "test" branch, and "next" like Debian's "unstable".
(Debian also has a "experimental" branch where the initial part of merges
are done, to keep unstable a bit less unstable.)  Like Emacs, changes
may be held back from "test" while a new release is being tested.

Its also close to the approach used by Git's own Git repository.

The "next" branch would where integration testing happens, and might be
badly broken for chunks of time.  A place where component maintainers make
sure that major structural changes are reflected in their components.

The "master" branch is where most of the final debugging takes place.

If "next" is active and "master" isn't, would be a time when some major
reworking is being performed.

It is more of a pipelined development:
    <new-feature-branch> -> "next" -> "master" -> <release>
or:
    <try-an-idea> -> <accept-and-put-into-general-use> -> <test> -> <release>

If this does not fit how Emacs development works, OK.  Its just an idea,
and I though worth consideration.  I think Emacs has always been great
software, and I certainly don't want to adversely effect that.

--
Barry Fishman