Developer branches

[Joseph Myers]

On Wed, 15 Sep 2021, Paul Koning via Gcc wrote:

> Some questions about developer branches:
> 
> 1. Who may create one?  Who may write to them?
> 2. Are they required to be listed in https://gcc.gnu.org/git.html ?  I 
> notice it mentioned a whole pile of them, most of which don't seem to 
> exist.

A devel/ branch (one in refs/heads/devel/) is a shared development branch, 
which may be created by anyone with write access (who can decide how it 
will work in terms of patch approvals etc.), should be documented in 
git.html, and will not accept non-fast-forward pushes or branch deletion.

A user branch (in refs/users/<username>/heads/) is a personal development 
branch, which may be created by that user (sourceware username), may not 
necessarily be documented in git.html, and can have non-fast-forward 
pushes or branch deletion (it's up to that user to decide the rules for 
that branch, including for non-fast-forward pushes).  Likewise a vendor 
branch (in refs/vendors/<vendor>/heads/).

All branches are subject to the same legal requirements (copyright 
assignment or DCO for code committed there).

Some basic commit message checks apply to all commits on all branches, but 
not the ones on ChangeLog entries (it's up to you if you want to have 
ChangeLog entries in commit messages on a development branch).

Many of the branches listed in git.html are old ones that were put in 
refs/dead/heads/ on conversion from SVN to git because they had not been 
active recently at that time.  Such branches ought to be moved to the 
Inactive section if not already there.

We don't have a documented process for moving a refs/heads/devel/ branch 
to refs/dead/heads/ after it's dead - that's something that can only be 
done with direct repository manipulation (git update-ref) on the server, 
it's not allowed as a push by the hooks, and should preferably be followed 
by

git repack --window=1250 --depth=250 -b -AdFfi

(on the server, takes a long time and over 100 GB of memory) because of 
how the delta islands configuration separates out the data for refs/dead/.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com