[Openfoam-extend-general] The patch-branch and the git-branch

[Bernhard G. <Ber...@ic...>]

It might have come to your attention[1], that the OpenCFD is offering a
service (via GIT) similar to the the patch-branches on OpenFOAM-extend
which in the long run might make these patch-branches obsolete (which
is a good thing)

Up to now the policy of the OF-extend-patch-branch was to

 * include only bug-fixes (no new features)
 * include only stuff that was accepted by the people from OpenCFD

As a test all the changes supplied by the Git-version were
incorporated into the patch-branch. Two patches from the message board
were missing from the Git and reapplied. So the patch-branch should
contain all the publicly known bug-fixes to OpenFOAM 1.5

One two-sided sword is that int the Git-version there are also
feature additions (which is good) and there was at least one instance
of a code broken by those additions (this was one of the reasons why
the patch-branch adopted the very conservative policy described
above). This one breakage might have been an unfortunate accident. 

To evaluate what the future options for the patch-branch should be I'm
relying on feedback:

 - is the patch-branch actually used?
 - were there problems with it in the past?
 - should it be abandoned in favour of the git-archive?

Bernhard

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://www.opencfd.co.uk/openfoam/download.html#download