[gst-devel] cvs use

[David Schleef]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2003 at 03:36:56PM +0100, Julien MOUTTE wrote:
> To conclude i would say that major breakage for structural changes of
> the core and plugins should happen in a BRANCH and get discussed a lot
> on the mailing list. HEAD does not guarantee that API/ABI is stable but
> it's at least partly working and let you work with it (i mean as a
> developer here not as a user). So that might break applications from
> time to time and that's normal, but that should not break the whole
> library (BUILD and RUN) because that would mean the code was not ready
> for being committed.

I agree violently.

> - Branching does not mean sending some code in a dead end way. Normal
> use of branches in our case would be :
>   a) Branch HEAD.
>   b) Break everything for a big architectural change.
>   c) Fix all the stuff in the Branch.
>   d) Merge it back.

This is how I intend to handle migration of caps to the new system
I'm currently developing.  The changes necessary to fix elements
due to the plugin API changes pale in comparison to what we'll need
for caps.  And I intend to do it all without breaking the build,
and preferably without checking in massive patches all at once.
This is going to require me to write large amounts of wrapper code
and test code, some of which will be thrown out when the transition
is complete.  But the purpose is simple -- to have a verifiably
working system at all stages, so that bugs are less likely to creep
in.



dave...