Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Working out a branching scheme [was: tag --seal --fix]

[Andrew Suffield]

On Thu, Apr 01, 2004 at 12:28:27PM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
>     > CVS symbolic tags map precisely to configurations. They are almost
>     > certainly what you are looking for.
> 
> Yes, but:
> 
> Configurations lack referential transparency.   A configuration file
> can change at any time.

And that's the biggest reason why they're the equivalent of symbolic
tags.

In real-world terms: you've cut the release, and it's ready to
go... but just as you're about to send the CD image off for mastering,
a major (but trivially fixable) bug is discovered.

The marketing materials have already been printed. They say "1.0.0" on
them. You're not allowed to change the version number at this
point. But you can afford a few hours to fix the bug and run the
regression suite again.

You don't normally need to change them. But when you do, you *really*
need to change them. Realistically, versions are descriptions, not
logical identifiers. The arch revision spec(s) is the identifier.

[You can make the contents of a *logical* file identity constant if
you want to - just make a rule that you only rename release configs,
you don't edit them, so your broken 1.0.0 release becomes 0.99.n
instead]

> Let's say I want to write in my "Big Book of Releases We've Made" the
> exact contents of release 1.0 and be able to look it up years later.
> 
> I'll need two things:  a config name, and an arch revision name of a
> revision that contains that exact config.   The revision name is what
> disambiguates the config name.

I'd say that you need one thing: the contents of the configuration.

>     > Doesn't exist. But tla show-changeset --diffs is pretty close,
>     > on the thing you just created with delta. It will likely be
>     > equivalent in 1.3, although maybe not with precisely the same
>     > command.
> 
> If you're thinking of working on that, it'd be helpful to make the
> changes in `changeset-report' and do a little call-graph analysis to
> float an option up to all commands that could use the feature.

I'm not, but somebody was...

-- 
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