[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

trunkless svn: using svn without a trunk

From: Jay Foad <jay.foad_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2018 11:08:50 +0000

Does anyone have experience of using svn without a trunk?

We use svn for a product with an annual release cycle. All new development
is done on trunk. Once a year we take a release branch, for fixing bugs
reported by customers.

One slight annoyance with this model is that when we start working on
version N of the product, it lives at http://svn.foo.com/trunk, but later
(after we have made the release branch) that same version lives at a
different location, http://svn.foo.com/branches/N. This means we have to
update some buildbots and svn:externals and whatnot that pointed to the
previous location.

In order to avoid that (amittedly minor) pain, we are considering moving to
a "trunkless" model where we abandon the use of http://svn.foo.com/trunk
and always work on
http://svn.foo.com/branches/N for some value of N. When we start working on
version N+1 we will create .../branches/N+1 as a branch of .../branches/N,
and start working there.

By the time we get to version 100 we'll be working on a branch of a branch
of a branch of a branch of ... 99 times over.

Does anyone have any experience of how well this works out in practice?

(In case it makes a difference: we don't tend to use a lot of feature
branches, so don't tend to do many big merges. I don't expect that to
change, regardless of whether or not we go trunkless.)

I'm aware of one technical problem: it'll be harder for us to do bisection
on our source code, because "svn update -r X" does not let you update to a
revision X that is older than when the current branch was created. I'm
optimistic that this can be improved in a future version of svn.

I found some previous discussion here:
https://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2007-01/0354.shtml
But I'm still wondering if there are any other technical problems I should
be aware of, or if there have been any relevant changes in the last 11
years of svn development.

Thanks,
Jay.
Received on 2018-03-08 12:47:21 CET

This is an archived mail posted to the Subversion Users mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.