Thanks all for this info.  I'm presuming that, because no-one has been rude
yet, that a lot of this is not in the developers manual, or FAQ yet.  Would
it be worthwhile putting it there?  Just a quick paragraph with the latest
settings, and default options for particular types of developers (e.g.:
somebody who wants to hack the source and contribute, somebody who wants the
latest patch tree, somebody who wants access to the latest source, but no
contributions, etc).

MikeA


>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us]
>> Sent: Monday, July 19, 1999 5:41 PM
>> To: Ansley, Michael
>> Cc: 'pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org'
>> Subject: Re: [HACKERS] CVS 
>> 
>> 
>> "Ansley, Michael" <Michael.Ansley@intec.co.za> writes:
>> >>> If there is any further activity in the 6.5 branch, it'd be to
>> >>> produce a 6.5.2 bug-fix release.  We don't generally do 
>> that except
>> >>> for really critical bugs, since double-patching a bug in both the
>> >>> tip and a branch is a pain.
>> 
>> > Double-patching is a pain, but I thought that that was the 
>> point of using
>> > CVS to do your branching.  AFAIK, CVS will merge the 
>> bug-fixes in, say, the
>> > 6.5.1 branch back into the main branch.  Because you want 
>> to fix the bugs in
>> > 6.5 into 6.5.1, without having to double-patch, but new 
>> development must
>> > only go into the main branch.  So, when 6.5.1 is released, 
>> it is merged back
>> > into the main branch to pass the fixes over, and also 
>> carries on to 6.5.2 in
>> > a continuation of the existing branch.
>> 
>> The trouble is that the tip usually diverges fast enough 
>> that mechanical
>> application of the same diffs to tip and stable branch doesn't work
>> very well :-(.
>> 
>> Also, our usual practice is to prove out a bugfix in the tip and then
>> consider whether to apply it to stable branches.  I'm not 
>> sure whether
>> CVS supports that as easily as merging a branch to the tip, but I'd
>> be *really* wary of mechanical diff transfer to stable branches...
>> if the diff extracts too little or too much of the changes in the
>> tip file, you might not find out till too late.
>> 
>> 			regards, tom lane
>> 

Mon, 19 Jul 1999 18:27:21 +0200
"Ansley, Michael" <Michael.Ansley@intec.co.za>
RE: [HACKERS] CVS 
> Thanks all for this info.  I'm presuming that, because no-one has been rude
> yet, that a lot of this is not in the developers manual, or FAQ yet.

Naw, we're just a bunch of polite people, at least today ;)

>  Would
> it be worthwhile putting it there?  Just a quick paragraph with the latest
> settings, and default options for particular types of developers (e.g.:
> somebody who wants to hack the source and contribute, somebody who wants the
> latest patch tree, somebody who wants access to the latest source, but no
> contributions, etc).

Please look at the appendix entitled "The CVS Repository". The source
is in cvs.sgml (and the derived html or hardcopy appendix is in the
integrated docs or developer's guide). Any and all updates or fixes or
rewrites would be welcome. Also, we should have a good cross-link to
it on the web page if we don't already. 

Perhaps current values could go into the FAQ, but the general
principles and today' settings should be in the main docs. So far,
we've had enough docs changes that we get new "big docs" for every
release, though sometime (way in the future) we might have things
settle down and be able to not update them every release.

                     - Thomas

-- 
Thomas Lockhart				lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu
South Pasadena, California

Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:58:50 +0000
Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
Re: [HACKERS] CVS