@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