[sldev] A brief history lesson on our branches (Re: http-texture branch)

Rob Lanphier robla at lindenlab.com
Fri Apr 24 18:06:33 PDT 2009


Hi folks,

I'm not sure if this message is going to make it easier or harder to
decipher what the difference between these branches are, but I'll give
it a shot. I'd document this on the wiki, but I'm hoping this will be a
temporary state of affairs, and we'll be able to set things up a little
more clearly after we announce the name for the new project (more on
that later...)

Here's a condensed history of how things went down, with some
simplifications to avoid making it too complicated.

When we first set up the Subversion repository, there was only source
pushes.  My thought at the time was that mirroring our internal
structure exactly would ease a transition from inside the firewall
development to outside the firewall development.  So, what you see is we
have "trunk" and we've got "branches".

We then realized that there was no safe place for external contributors
to commit, because commits would get stomped by our export scripts.  So
we created the (now pretty much dormant) "sandbox" area as an
experiment, that was cordoned off from being stomped on by the
exporter.  Later on, we wanted to have a more serious project that was
more of a shared effort that we were conducting with an external vendor
in the public repository, so we created the "projects" area.

Like I said earlier, hopefully we'll be able to make things clearer once
we have a project name we can emblazon all over everything (I'm guessing
we'll at least create a new top level project that isn't "linden", for
example, but that's just my wild Friday afternoon crazy talk).

Some enterprising soul may want to update this page to reflect the new
world order, since it's been a while since its seen an update:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Source_branches

(bearing in mind that things may change again when we have a project name)

Anyway, sorry for the confusion, and I hope this helps.

Rob
p.s. I'll be out on vacation next week, so while I'll be on email for
some of it, probably not too responsive here.  Have a great
weekend...talk to you all when I'm back


On 4/24/09 3:36 PM, Philippe Bossut (Merov Linden) wrote:
> Hi Techwolf,
>
> On Apr 24, 2009, at 3:05 PM, lists.secondlife.com at trap.wereanimal.net  
> wrote:
>   
>> Witch one should we be testing? branches or projects?
>>     
>
> We should be testing projects and developing in projects. Always.  
> Projects is what we do and test and breathe.
>
>   
>> And why two of the same project?
>>     
>
> "branches" is the parking repository for the "vendor" version, the  
> code that gets exported by LL into the OSS realm. That's where code  
> lands when they throw it over the wall (<disclaimer>I'm being  
> facetious here with my use of vocabulary and, in that particular  
> instance, that's me throwing code over the wall</disclaimer>). We (as  
> open source developers) are not supposed to modify branches ever. They  
> are sacred and represent what comes from Lindens. We build it though  
> to make sure it's not evil, that our changes don't get stomped by  
> Linden updates and that we like it enough to merge it into our projects.
>
> Makes sense?
>
> Cheers,
> - Merov
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