CODEWITHSUNDEEP
svnbranching-and-merging
Brandon Montgomery
Brandon Montgomery

Reputation: 6986

How to get developers to remember to merge their bug fixes everywhere?

We use the branch-per-release model of development with Subversion. We tend to have 2 or 3 active branches at a time - trunk (development), and two release (maintenance) branches (i.e. 5.0 and 6.0).

The problem we keep running into is that if we find a bug in 5.0 and fix it in 5.0, not everyone always remembers to merge their fixes into all branches into which the bugfix needs to be merged (6.0 and trunk in this case).

How do you make sure bug fixes are merged into all necessary branches? What is a good way of going about this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 129

Answers (3)

zellus
zellus

Reputation: 9592

Continuous integration could help as well, using 'common' tests for development and maintenance trees.

Upvotes: 0

Ether
Ether

Reputation: 53976

Do you have dedicated testers? It should be the testers' responsibility to verify that "fixed" really means "fixed in the 5.0 and 6.0 development trees".

Upvotes: 2

Rob Hruska
Rob Hruska

Reputation: 120316

The best way is probably just communication and education. Have team meetings - make sure that all of your developers are on the same page. We have a similar SVN structure, and whenever I fix a bug, the first thing I ask myself after committing is, "where else does this need to be merged?" - it's just been hammered into my mind through communication and repetition.

Put the list of branches getting merged bugs on a wiki page or other public document so that it's easily findable by all developers.

Upvotes: 3

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