From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:35:17 -0400 (CLT)
This seems to be a common issue, which I've seen at Mule and now on the Python list: an existing product is popular and has "major number" release that is being developed while the existing code is maintained. The problem is how to manage the development so that fixes are shared across both versions as easily as possible. This becomes harder as the two diverge, because Subversion cannot merge changes on both branches as easily. I don't think there's a magic bullet, but I do get the impression that people underestimate the cost of this and, as a consequence, don't try sufficiently to minimize the time over which the two divergent versions are being developed (not maintained for legacy work, but actively developed). The python-dev discussions are at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-May/thread.html - there's no single thread that has all the discussion, unfortunately. See, for example http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-May/079835.html and http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-May/079843.html The suggestion to merge after applying conversion tools is particularly interesting. Andrew