Trunk vs. branch

I'm thinking of moving The Burning Edge to the aviary branch.

Trunk advantages:

  • Will become Firefox 2.0 in the future.
  • Has a fix for config.trim_on_minimize (248423).
  • Has a fix for Slashdot rendering (217527).

Branch advantages:

  • Will become Firefox 1.0 and all Firefox 1.x releases, so it's more important to test in the short term.
  • Find Toolbar.
  • Live Bookmarks (in tomorrow's builds).
  • Has fixes for some toolbar customization bugs (232707, 221482).
  • Has a working extension manager.

32 Responses to “Trunk vs. branch”

  1. Thomas Kaschwig Says:

    > Will become Firefox 2.0 in the future.

    Will Firefox 1.x never return to the trunk? I thought, that the aviary branch was only created for Firefox release 0.9-1.0.

  2. Dennis Spaag Says:

    I am more interested in the 1.0 release track.

  3. amake Says:

    How about you track the branch until 1.0, and then see where the major action is at that point? If there are outstanding bugs and a quick maintenance release (1.0.1 or something) is indicated, then keep following it. Otherwise, consider switching back to the trunk.

  4. Steffen Wilberg Says:

    All the action is in the branch. New features, new regressions, new crashes, yay!

  5. Forest Says:

    Agreed; I think the Burning Edge summaries are more useful to end users than to developers, and end users will be more interested in the branch that will become the next release.

  6. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    Blake Ross (a Firefox developer) reads The Burning Edge and says it would be more useful to him if it followed the branch.

  7. curious Says:

    http://www.exchangecode.com/spellbound/
    since “spellbound” only states .9+ (actually the title say 9.0+… but we’ll let that pass) I’m sticking with aviary… heaven forbid it looks for .8 somewhere… shrugs

  8. Mike Goodspeed Says:

    Go with the branch because 1) people read your buglists and d/l the ones with the least amount of pink :) — we need aviary testers — and 2) the trunk is just going to be behind and then one day you’re going to have a giant patch that says something like “ported extension manager from branch to trunk” and we’ve missed all that development.

    Not to mention, since the road to 1.0 is on the branch, this blog stopped being on the bleeding — er burning — edge when it stopped covering the branch.

  9. MattCoz Says:

    Leading up to 0.8 you covered both, I thought that was nice. I understand if that takes up too much of your time though. At the moment, the branch is more important to track, but it would be nice if there were weekly updates about the trunk as well.

  10. Sander Says:

    Go for the branch, Jesse! I’ll be with you :)

  11. TheOneKEA Says:

    Go with the branch – primarily because the new extension manager works on the branch.

  12. Malendur Says:

    You should stay with the trunk, because it concerns also Mozilla 1.8 branch where all modifications related to gecko engine appear first

  13. Leo Says:

    I would start testing aviary builds if you switch to cover the branch. Currently I just use the release versions.

  14. Will Rickards Says:

    Another me too for the Branch.

  15. Jimmy Buck Says:

    I also vote for the branch.

  16. Hunter Chorey Says:

    I say go with the aviary branch. :)

  17. David Stone Says:

    +1 for the Branch.

  18. Xaxio Says:

    I’ve never used a branch build — I follow the burning edge as according to you. It makes sense to switch over to branch if it’s practical and then switch back to trunk as we get closer to 2.0 — say maybe at 1.7 or something of the sort ;)

    My vote is for the branch.

  19. Phobeus Says:

    I personally would like to continue the trunk, however simply because in mozillazine forum mainly everyone concentrate on branch and I like to be informed at BE about the trunk a lot. However, choose wisely ;)

  20. anon Says:

    +1 for the branch

  21. Jafe Mourner Says:

    I’m more interested in the leaves… :|

  22. Doug Says:

    +1 for BOTH :-)

    but I also thought the AVIARY branch was for up to 1.0 only…

  23. Ranfaroth Says:

    I vote also for the trunk, because aviary branch is already covered in mozillazine board

  24. Teko Says:

    branch++;

  25. Karl Says:

    I vote for branch. And its obvious that most people agree with me =)

  26. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    I counted 18 votes for branch and 4 for trunk. Branch it is :)

  27. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    I’ll try to do weekly trunk updates.

  28. lokean Says:

    Sounds like a good decision. And thank you again for the work you do on BE!

  29. stipe Says:

    I vote for the trunk. It’s faster and I don’t use any extensions so I don’t need the extension manager from aviary.

  30. Mike Wills Says:

    How about taking advantage of the categories in MovableType and do both?

  31. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    I do use categories in Movable Type (trunk, branch). Posts with a gray border are branch. There are archive pages for each. I don’t remember if I set up an RSS feed for each.

  32. Jadugar Says:

    Is it too late to vote for Trunk?