Merge or Cherry-Pick?

[Alexander Neundorf]

On Wednesday 02 February 2011, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> Em quarta-feira, 2 de fevereiro de 2011, às 11:46:20, Wolfgang Rohdewald
>
> escreveu:
> > On Dienstag 01 Februar 2011, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > > > That's not always true. Some changes will be specific to
> > > > 4.6, because sections of code in master can get rewritten,
> > > > features added or removed, so the changes won't be
> > > > applicable there.
> > >
> > > That's not a problem or an excuse.
> > >
> > > Make the change in 4.6, merge to master, fix the conflicts and
> > > then push both  branches.
> >
> > if I continue developing the app in master and fix some bugs on
> > the way, the fixes will be in master first. I would not always
> > want to put them into 4.6 at once because testing in master is
> > much easier and comes at much less cost while development goes
> > on. So I might even want to wait some days or even weeks until
> > backporting fixes.
>
> Laziness is not an argument -- it's just an excuse.

For spare-time contributors "laziness" (i.e. saving time) is an argument.

> If you find a bug that applies to 4.6, why will you not fix it there?
>
> In my experience, testing the *stable* releases is easier. Testing the
> development versions usually cause trouble because of unfinished features
> and untested new code.

The code may already differ.
The developer may not have both branches installed in a recent and runnable 
state.

Alex