Re: [Adonthell-devel] Partly merging v0.4 back

[Kai Sterker]

On 05 Apr 2002 21:50:47 +0200 Alexandre Courbot wrote:

> This is quite a boring problem. But couldn't it be avoided if we
> follow this scenario:
> You commit the new dialog engine, and unless ALL the 0.4 branch is
> merged, changes first occurs in THIS branch before being merged with
> the main one. That way, merges are only unilateral, and we shouldn't
> fear such conflicts... should we? I find the additionnal branch tip
> more confusing than solving conflicts by hand! :)

Hm? Now I am confused ;). You mean we should first add things to 0.4
before merging with 0.3, right? That way there wouldn't be any conflicts
between changes in both v0.3 and v0.4. That's true of course.

But the problem I was talking about occurs when we merge the v0.4 branch
back _and_ continue making changes on that branch. Because if we merge
it _again_, those parts that were already merged will cause conflicts,
as CVS does not know that they come from an _earlier_ merge with the
same branch. That can be avoided by tagging the 0.4 branch at points we 
merge part of it back. Next time we merge it back, we merge only changes
that are newer than the tag, thus avoiding the conflicts. (You wouldn't
want to solve a conflict in every single file you merged back more than
once by hand, would you?)

We'll have to be careful though, as I only merged a part of v0.4 back.
So for part of the code we'll have to merge the complete 0.4 branch, and
for others only the newer changes (as the older ones are merged
already). Not that any of this is a problem, as long as we don't forget
to tag the points where we merge (parts of) 0.4 back. (And remember what
has been merged back and what not)


As for your suggestion: I don't think that's really neccessary in case
of the dialogue stuff. I planned to make all future changes in the main
trunk (i.e. 0.3) so there shouldn't be any conflicts. And it saves us
from the above. That of course means that we wouldn't have the dialogue
stuff in the v0.4 branch. If you think that is a problem, we'll do it as
you suggest. Otherwise, adding it directly to 0.3 seems to be easier.


Hope things are a bit clearer now :)

Kai