[mythtv] Branching for features/etc

[Isaac Richards]

On Friday 30 January 2009 1:00:33 am Bill Williamson wrote:
> Coming from a development background the big "issue" people are having is
> that myth is a "dev is the trunk, stable is a branch" methodology instead
> of a "trunk is main, features are branched" one.
>
> For example, the way many other projects would be run is that trunk would
> remain stable.  VDAPU would be a branch (kept compatible against trunk) and
> once it was ready it would be merged back in.  Same with HD-PVR, the new
> mythui support, etc.

We do a combination of both ways, I think it's fair to say.  Depends on the 
feature.

This really only works if the features are self-contained enough to do a 
branch.  See the mythtv-vid branch - new video features that was recently 
deemed stable enough to merge, though some new development is continuing in 
the branch.

Like the Qt4 port, the new UI code as a whole is pretty much too invasive to 
do in a separate branch.  There'd be way too many painful merges otherwise, 
unless everyone working in trunk also took the time to merge their changes 
into the branch.   Though, some parts are being done in separate branches - 
see the recently created mythmusic-ui branch, and I thought mythvideo had a 
branch while it was being worked on as well.

Conversely, if something has virtually no chance of destabilizing other code 
(like the vdpau stuff did), then there's really no reason to put it in a 
branch.

Isaac