No feature-branches in the mainline repositories

[David Nolden]

2010/5/26 Andreas Pakulat <apaku at gmx.de>:
> This is a difference. The mainline repository should contain branches
> you can checkout, track and regularly build. The topic-branches are
> usually merged into a local checkout if you want to test out that
> feature/change. In particular this is true for topic-branches that live
> more than a day or so as in that case you want the changes from the
> topic-branch with the rest of master together. Not some 8 weeks old
> development stage of master (which the topic-branch was created from).

Well, but doesn't that mean that the user who checks out the
topic-branch will have to merge the topic-branch manually with
whatever his current master is? In many cases, this might be quite a
bit of work, and the result may often be non-working code, as you
cannot just merge random stuff together without seriously thinking
about it. I think that's not a good concept, merging should be done
only once by those who are familiar with the changes, and only once.
It's much easier and safer to just switch to a topic-branch and be
sure that you have exactly the same code in front of you as the other
ones who have checked out this topic branch.

Greetings, David