art yerkes wrote:
We need a stable branch, or we need to branch dangerous edits. There's no other choice imo. We can live with broken branches. We can't live with a 100% nonworking operating system in trunk.
I can only second that. Recently I haven't had a lot of time for ROS, I have only a few hours I can use each week, but whenever I want to work something (yes, I'd like to test it on a running system) there's almost always only two scenarios:
1. ROS doesn't build (ok, I use gcc4, my fault) 2. ROS doesn't boot
I've been fixing compiling issues because I'm one of the few people who use a more recent version of GCC. This sometimes requires quite some time, but I can live with it. But when I have to fix or debug broken code first, most of my time is gone, or I don't even have the motivation to fix it in the first place because I'd not get to work on things I'd like to, and then next time I get a chance to work on my things I'd have to go through the same procedure again. I like my tree to be up to date, but it's been impossible to work on it recently. It's a bit better now than it used to be a couple of months ago, but I remember the days where trunk was generally in a rather stable state. Of course it's sometimes broken, but we need to make sure things actually compile and that changes are tested sufficiently (Yes, many of my recent changes haven't been tested in ROS because I haven't been able to most of the time). I'm not perfect myself, neither I blame just one person. We all need to work harder on keeping trunk a little bit more stable.
- Thomas