[Coco] making patches to NitrOS-9 (part II)

[Bill Pierce]

Tormod, 
First I would like to thank you in acting as "moderator" to the NitrOS9 repository changes. I (and others) trust your judgement as well as your knowledge in how the system functions. 
I have one issue with all the changes being made with "commits" to the repo. If someone makes changes that are not quite finished, or maybe even has typos they haven't caught (it happens), then this makes the repo uncompilable for everyone else until the issue is fixed. Also, any "experimental" code may be thought to be "stable" by the end user and then we get the questions/accusations on the list like "why doesn't xxx work?" etc. 
My suggestion is to use separate branches, one for a "stable current release" build and a 2nd for "experimental/developmental" builds. In this way, we have a branch that will "always" build stable, usable code, and a 2nd branch that developers can work on new code and modify the old for new features and bug fixes. 
Once the "experimental" branch reaches a state of "stable", it can be merged with the current release as a new revision. 
Branches could be named as: 
nitros9_3.3.0 
nitros9_3.3.1d_dev (or nitros9_3.3.1b_beta)
or something similar and appropriate.

I feel this approach would "side rail" something I see coming which is a big clash of "but I made my changes first" and "why won't the repo build?" etc.

Most other "open source" projects I have seen use this very approach and and have a "stable" current release as well as a "developer beta" release for trying new features. 
Without this being implemented, the "clash" is inevitable.

In this way, those of us who don't want to play around with experimental code or maybe even crash our builds when we need the current release, would have a "stable" build branch that can be relied on.

I have already had a couple of instances that I caught "errors" in that code was not quite ready and the build failed. These usually disappeared by the next day, but that was a day I had to wait on something I needed immediately or I wouldn't have been compiling a new set of dsks.

Bill Pierce
Bill Pierce

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