Re: [Gaim-devel] CVS Development & Tags/Branches

[Luke S. <lsc...@us...>]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 11:43:59AM -0400, Matt Amato wrote:
>     Let me apologize in advance if this question gets asked often or
> if there is a document I should be reading that has the answer.  I
> searched everyone online and in the source tree (including the HACKING
> file) but couldn't find the answer.
>     Anyways, the question is this.  If I'm submitting patches to gaim,
> (including trivial ones such as adding a new signal emission for
> removing a buddy) should I do this against CVS HEAD?  Or is there some
> branch/tag I should be syncing to?  I ask this because HEAD seems
> vastly different and unstable than say, 1.2.1, and I don't know when
> 2.0 is supposed to be released.  So if I have a minor patch that I
> want to see make it in before 2.0, I wasn't sure what I should be
> developing against.  The HACKING file says don't develop against the
> last stable release, so I thought maybe there was a tag/branch I could
> sync to.

bug fixes of all sorts should be done on the oldstatus branch where
possible.  significant additions should be on HEAD. The one faq
question more or less addresses this:

What will the next version be?
    Starting with version 1.0.0, Gaim version numbers have 3 parts to
	them. The format is major.minor.micro. If we change something
	internally in Gaim such that some plugins won't work with the
	newer version, we will increment the major version number. If we
	don't increment the major version number, and we've added things
	to the Gaim API that won't break any older stuff, we will
	increment the minor version number. In any other cases, we will
	increment the micro version number. Even and odd numbers have
	nothing to do with stability, and you should always be running the
	latest release of Gaim to get new features and bug fixes.

Right now we have just released 1.2.1, and are looking at 1.3.0 for
the next release.  cvs head is currently set to be 2.0.0, the 1.x
releases are happening on the oldstatus tag/branch. 

>     Also, how unstable is HEAD usually?  I have a build of it and it
> seems to crash if I try and add a buddy, I was unsure if HEAD is
> generally very unstable, or if I just happen to catch it at a bad
> time.

It kind of depends.  Often HEAD is fairly stable, but we really aren't
afraid to break it.  Since branching 1.x off to oldstatus, that has
been even more true.  current problems are in buddy addition, signing
on for the first few times after upgrading, all of sending messages in
general, and everything related to your status (being
online/offline/invisible, away or not, so on).  if we don't branch 2.x
off for a 3.x release, HEAD will start being more or less stable again
after 2.x is released, but I never recommend running it unless working
on a patch, plugin, or translation.   Basically, if you aren't working
closely with us, and following the mailing list and channel activity,
HEAD will have a huge potential to catch you by surprise,
unpleasently.

luke

> 
>     Thanks,
>         Matt