Re: [Condor-devel] how to merge manual

[Nathan Panike <nwp@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 09:53:30PM -0500, Karen Miller wrote:
> Nathan,
> I re-read your message, and I think that your solution of creating
> a new branch for changes (like to 7.7.0) post-release is one that
> Dan and I discussed.  The difficulty is that it doesn't solve
> the problem, which is that changes placed onto (for this example)
> V7_6-branch (stable) in the manual get merged into this
> new branch, ...

Hi Karen:

I was envisaging that only changes in doc/ would be merged post-release. That
was the point of calling it, say, V7_7_0-doc-branch, to keep a reminder that it
was only for documentation changes. Changes to src/ would bypass this
doc-branch completely.

Thus, in our current situation, we have the following 4 branches in my scheme:

V7_6_2-doc-branch (For documentation updates to 7.6.2)
V7_6-branch (stable series)
V7_7_0-doc-branch (For documentation updates to 7.7.0)
master (devel series)

Suppose documentation was added to V7_6_2-doc-branch. Then the following merges
would take place, using our current policy of merging forward as a guide:

V7_6_2-doc-branch -> V7_6-branch -> master
V7_6_2-doc-branch -> V7_7_0-doc-branch -> master
(OK, now I see the problem... This second merge could potentially have a
conflict, although I do not believe it will. And the only possible conflict
would be in doc/---assuming that V7_6_2-branch is contained in
V7_7_0-branch---which does fall under your purview. Another problem is that it
is tedious to list explicitly all these rules.)

A change on V7_6-branch would bypass V7_7_0-doc-branch, e.g.,
V7_6-branch -> master
as it would have changes that are do not pertain to 7.7.0.

> ... and hence we have the same problem as before with
> bringing in code changes -- causing src conflicts that I would
> have to resolve.  My resolution (no matter what I chose to do)
> would inevitably be wrong when those changes are then propagated
> to the master.

This is the part that I just plain do not understand.  This is the way I think
about it: You only get conflicts when you merge.  And you only get conflicts if
you and another team member have made changes to the same part of a document or
code.  Thus if you, Karen, are only changing source code (LaTeX) in doc/, then
the only conflicts you can have will be in doc/, and not in src, unless
developers are feeding you unmerged code via a non-git channel, which you then
merge.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean by "src conflicts", or I am lacking
imagination/experience about what can happen, or I have too much confidence
placed in git to do the correct thing.

I agree with your earlier point that documentation should not be a second-class
citizen.

Nathan Panike