[mythtv] SVN Branching

[Michael T. Dean]

Adrian Wilkins wrote:

>Can I ask, without rudeness, if Isaac considered using a branch to do
>the gargantuan overhaul of LiveTV that continues to progress?
>  
>
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/160123#160123

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/160124#160124

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/160130#160130

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/160132#160132

>It's mostly from the point of view of mild frustration ; there have
>been plenty of fixes going in for DVB hardware with less complete
>driver support (USB devices in particular), which are relevant to my
>situation, but I don't relish the task of working around the potential
>minefield that is the LiveTV revamp to test them, and I don't relish
>the idea of "foward-merging" DVB changes from a particular revision to
>obtain the DVB patches in isolation.
>  
>
I wonder how much the devs would have relished the idea of merging all 
the DVB changes from the "LiveTV still works trunk" with all the changes 
in the "LiveTV overhaul" branch...  From the SVN Book ( 
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/svn-book.html#svn-ch-4-sect-3.3.1 ):  
"Merging changes sounds simple enough, but in practice it can become a 
headache."

>Obviously, this isn't going to happen now, but I was wondering if it
>was worth examining the reasons for not doing so and whether it would
>have been beneficial to the MythTV project as a whole to keep a
>changeset of such magnitude to a development branch. My contention is
>that it would have enabled people to continue to use the HEAD revision
>of /trunk without suffering almost-certain-breakage and thus
>benefitting from the smaller fixes whilst eagerly anticipating the Big
>Cahoona.
>  
>
Here's a question for you...  If it's really that important, why didn't 
(don't) /you/ create a branch?  Myth is open source.  Subversion is open 
source.  You can set up your own subversion server and create your own 
private "vendor branch."  This way, you--not the Myth devs--get to do 
the extra work involved but still get the benefit of having SVN help you 
out.  And the Myth devs can concentrate on making new 
features/enhancements/bug fixes to Myth...  It would be one thing if 
branching really were as "magic" as many people seem to think it is, but 
until you've actually tried maintaining a vendor branch for this 
specific purpose (a working LiveTV branch pulling some changes from 
Myth's trunk--which is basically the same work the devs would have to 
do), you don't have a good picture of the real "cost" of doing the branch.

I don't know about Isaac, but if it were my project and I saw this many 
people complaining about my not branching, I would purposefully delay 
the completion of the LiveTV overhaul.  Maybe I'm just mean, but...

Mike