Re: Creating an "approved" branch

On Friday 09 March 2007 17:55, Larry Martell wrote:
> I am new to SVN so please bear with me.
>
> I have been asked to create an "approved" branch for a project. What is
> wanted is a branch that starts out empty. Then, as individual modules are
> approved by QA they get copied into the approved branch. (To me, this
> doesn't seem to be the best way to use branches, but this is what they
> want.)
>
> I'm trying to figure out the best way to achieve this. Here is what I've
> come up with - please let me know if this makes any sense, and/or if
> there's a better way to do this.
>
> -create a branch (named approved) that is a copy of the trunk
> -remove everything from the approved branch
> -each time QA approves a module it is copied from the trunk into the
> approved branch

Well, if you do it that way you can simplify it a bit:

 * Create an *empty* branch named "approved" (w/ svn mkdir, not svn cp)
 * Each time QA approves a module, copy it to approved branch (svn cp)

In general, lots of things depend on a lot on your process, e.g.:

  * How long does it take for QA to review a module? Is this going to impact
your development in trunk? Maybe you need an intermediate branch for QA to
review.

  * Do the modules have interdependencies that need to be tested together?
Is reviewing modules independently sufficient? This could affect whether or
not you want to do a module-by-module approval, or if you just want to have
a whole QA branch to stabilise.

Anyway, I'd be sure to think out your goals and require processes and if it
doesn't work with a de-facto standard branch/tag flow (as documented
numerous places online), at least set something up that isn't going to burn
you too bad later. =)

-- 
Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net> <xmpp:wjl@icecavern.net>
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