[Kst] The use of branches

[George Staikos]

  I was thinking I should send a note to the list about the use of branches 
for the development of Kst.  I've been advocating them for years now, and I 
have used them myself since I started working on Kst.  Branches are an 
important tool when developing with CVS and SVN.  They allow developers to 
work on new features, experiments, dangerous changes, and invasive or 
high-impact changes without affecting the stability of the mainline code and 
impacting release cycles.  Part of my job is to make sure we have well-timed 
stable releases of Kst and in order to accomplish this goal I need to be sure 
that the mainline remains stable.  I will continue to be responsible for 
making sure that branch work that turns out well gets merged into trunk.  In 
fact branch work sometimes fails and it thrown away.  This is part of the 
cycle of software development and there's nothing wrong with that.

  Please consider the use of branches for new work.  If you're working on a 
major new chunk of code, just branch and develop it there.  Let everyone know 
so we can avoid causing too much conflict.  I will do all the work to merge 
branches into trunk if anyone doesn't want to or doesn't know how.  I'm quite 
experienced with it and can do it quickly.  Just drop me a note.  I'm also 
willing to setup new branches for people as required.

  Think of branches as a tool, and please, take advantage.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/