@subsection Goals

This directory implements the Subversion's branches concept in a

trunk, branches, tags repository structure.

@subsection Description

The @file{branches/} directory structure is an intermediate space

between @file{trunk/} directory structure and @file{tags/} directory

structure.

@subsection Usage

If changes committed to the main develpment line are all predictable

(e.g., there is just one person committing changes), there is no a big

need of using @file{branches/} directory structure, in this case we

can go straight from @file{trunk/} to @file{tags/}.  However, when

there is no way to predict changes in the main development directory

structure (e.g., there are many people working at it at the same time)

it is required to find out a space when changes can occur in

predictable ways. 

At this point several options may arise to work with branches. Let's

see a few ones:

@subsubsection Temporal Branch

The branched directory is created temporaly to fix a problem and when

it is done, it is merged back into @file{trunk/} directory structure

and removed from the repository.

@subsubsection Major Release Branch

The branched directory is created to implement the concept of major

release. In this configuration we frequently take a functional

instance of @file{trunk/} directory structure and create branch for

it. While @file{trunk/} directory structure can receive new

functionalities or remove old ones, the branched instance of it does

not. The branched instance can receive updates for available files

only but not introduce new ones or remove old ones as it is done in

@file{trunk/} directory structure.

The frequency each branched directory is created depends on how long

can the branched directory could be on its state before consider it as

dated and also the time we want to provide it as stable for everyone

to use as expected. The exact time depends on the sort of information

such branched directory structure contains.

To illustrate this concept consider the @file{trunk/Scripts/Bash/Cli}

directory structure. This directory contains the main development line

of @command{centos-art} command-line internface. If there are several

people working on it and you find a problem in it, it could be very

frustrating for you try to solve it in an environment when other

changes could be introduced unexpectedly, specially if such change you

need to do is considerable long. For that reasing it is much better to

commit small changes frequently to fix small things, but if you

absolutly need to make a long change (e.g., you want to implement a

new functionality) it is necessary you create branch of @file{trunk/}

directory structure (or any other branch or tag already created) to be

on the safe side while you implement your functionality.

In order to keep branch creation organized, we use the @file{trunk}

directory structure as reference and add a numerical identifier to the

end of the path that increments one unit for each branch created.

@subsection See also

@menu

* Filesystem trunk::

* Filesystem tags::

@end menu