merge maint into master

[Akim Demaille]

I find it disturbing that git describe still
sees master as deriving from 2.4, so I installed
the following patch.  It also resulted in maint
not accept %require "2.5" since it sees itself as
a 2.4.

Besides, I am now less happy with the double-patch system,
I would prefer to see fixes installed in maint, and then
merge maint occasionally into master, this is seems more
tractable to me.  I practiced this elsewhere, and it's really
nice.

This is simply

        git merge -s ours origin/maint

commit 70986d84bc674b0fbd9a4dcf5ee192e2cec364bf
Merge: 62243aa 84c1cdc
Author: Akim Demaille <akim@...>
Date:   Mon Mar 19 11:35:46 2012 +0100

    Merge remote-tracking branch 'fsf/maint'
   
    * fsf/maint: (404 commits)
      doc: update the --verbose report format.
      doc: spell check.
      doc: stmt, not stmnt.
      doc: save width.
      doc: reformat grammar snippets.
      doc: use only @example, not @smallexample.
      doc: style changes.
      doc: minor fixes to "Understanding" section
      tests: minor fixes/simplifications
      tests: be robust to quote style.
      maint: update gnulib.
      tests: be robust to POSIXLY_CORRECT being defined.
      doc: fix environment issues.
      regen.
      tests: fix regressions.
      glr: fix ambiguity reports.
      doc: stylistic improvements.
      maint: address sc_prohibit_doubled_word.
      maint: address sc_prohibit_always-defined_macros.
      maint: address sc_bindtextdomain, sc_program_name and sc_prohibit_HAVE_MBRTOWC.
      ...

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/19/2012 03:45 AM, Akim Demaille wrote:
> I would prefer to see fixes installed in maint, and then
> merge maint occasionally into master, this is seems more
> tractable to me.  I practiced this elsewhere, and it's really
> nice.

I'm used to a system where 'master' is the
"latest and greatest" version.  This is more
common in GNU projects, I think; anyway, it's
what's used for Emacs, glibc, coreutils, etc.
Of course the "maint" approach also works (it's
what git uses itself), and if you prefer that
mode of operation that's fine, but in a
project as small as Bison pretty much anything will
do, and surely it should be OK if some developers
install fixes directly into 'master'.

[Akim Demaille]

Le 19 mars 2012 à 15:45, Paul Eggert a écrit :

> On 03/19/2012 03:45 AM, Akim Demaille wrote:
>> I would prefer to see fixes installed in maint, and then
>> merge maint occasionally into master, this is seems more
>> tractable to me.  I practiced this elsewhere, and it's really
>> nice.
>
> I'm used to a system where 'master' is the
> "latest and greatest" version.

Which is also the case here.

> This is more
> common in GNU projects, I think; anyway, it's
> what's used for Emacs, glibc, coreutils, etc.
> Of course the "maint" approach also works (it's
> what git uses itself), and if you prefer that
> mode of operation that's fine, but in a
> project as small as Bison pretty much anything will
> do, and surely it should be OK if some developers
> install fixes directly into 'master'.

Yet if they are installed in maint, then merging
maint into master will make sure that nothing is
lost.  The converse does not hold: since obviously
master is not to be merged into maint, it is easy
to miss patches.

The current system is too demanding imho.


Is Bison the only project (among those) to issue
maintenance releases?

[Paul Eggert]

On 03/19/2012 07:55 AM, Akim Demaille wrote:
> Is Bison the only project (among those) to issue
> maintenance releases?

No, at least Emacs and glibc have maintenance
releases.

In Emacs some patches are applied to the emacs-23 branch,
and someone occasionally merges them into 'master'.  A 'pending'
branch holds patches waiting to get into 'master'.  But
the 'pending' branch is rarely used (two changes since
July) and the emacs-23 branch is strictly for the old
release.  The main development is all in 'master'.  After
Emacs 24 comes out, a new emacs-24 branch will be created
for it.

In glibc there is a separate branch for every release,
and as I understand it these primarily cherry-pick fixes
back from 'master'.  The main development is on 'master'.