Subversion - should anyone be developing off the trunk?

Question

When using Subversion, should developers be working off the trunk or should the trunk be only used for merges from each individual developer\'s branch and watched by a conti

Answer 1

Our trunk is only to merge and fix urgency bugs. When we have a new project, we branch the trunk, develop over the branch, rebase from trunk if any other branch was merged into the trunk and when we are done ready to test, we deploy the branch. When test is OK, we merge to trunk, and release to beta. Before the merge, we do a version on the trunk to avoid problems.

After beta was OK, we release to prod.

Answer 2

In my company we have adopted stable trunk development model with code being developed and fully tested on branches before being merged up to the trunk. But i am finding this practice pretty daunting because it often takes months for the validation team to get around to fully testing the feature branches. So we end up with these branches lingering around for months before we can merge them back into trunk.

The flip side of this would be to use unstable trunk development with all changes going into the trunk all the time, but then our validation team starts complaining that they don't have confidence in the code because everyone's changes are always in there and there is no isolation.

So seems like neither one of these approaches is really optimal. Is there a more optimal approach for a team where validation can take a really long time?

Answer 3

I'm working on a version 3.0 of our product today and checking in my code changes into the trunk. The release is still several weeks ahead.

A coworker is experimenting with some features that might make it into 4.0, but definitely not into 3.0. She is checking her stuff into a separate branch. It would be wrong to check in that kind of stuff into the trunk.

Another coworker is fixing bugs in version 2.5, which we already shipped to a customer. He is checking them into the 2.5 branch for obvious reasons.

So, to answer the headline question (Should everyone be developing off the trunk, my answer is no. HTH

P.S. about merging. We could selectively merge some stuff from 2.5 branch to the trunk later, but not from the trunk back to the branch. The merging between the trunk and the 4.0 branch can go both ways.

Answer 4

yes, that should be your working copy for release. All of your branches should be previous release versions of your code.

Answer 5

I have developers who create project branches or change request/bug branches off of trunk, and then merge back, so in a way yes, I have developers working off of trunk, but what goes into "merge" branches is controlled through some build-control tool or process.

I think this is pretty well covered by this question