Development Branch

[adrianwells]

@CalebAlbers - Hello. May you please update the development branch to match master to help keep it in sync with master if not ahead of it depending on the work being performed?

[ecspresso]

The development branch is still behind and is not used. Do we have any plans for this branch?

[oOblik]

I'd recommend updating the development branch and adding a CONTRIBUTING.md to instruct that all PRs be made on the development branch. It would take some of the stress away from merging directly into master, and would help to streamline a test/release process in the future.

[adrianwells]

@oOblik this seems like a reasonable approach. FYI @davidhaymond

[davidhaymond]

I definitely agree that we should add CONTRIBUTING.md. However, I am personally of the opinion that development for projects with versioned releases should take place on the default branch—in this case, master. This is not a continuous deployment scenario where master is automatically deployed to production. Stable versions should be tagged and released using GitHub releases and the PowerShell Gallery; there is no need to pin master to the latest stable release. I think it adds unneeded overhead (resolving conflicts on a development branch will be no different than resolving them on a master branch).

Of course, care should be taken to keep the master branch clean; only polished, tested PRs should be merged, and incomplete features should be finished (perhaps in a separate feature branch for larger features) before merging into master. That way, master can be a sort of "bleeding-edge" build or rolling beta that contains the latest work. Many, many projects use master for development, including PowerShell itself. Other large projects using the default branch for development include Vue, React, Linux, Go, and Django. Development branches seem more common in web apps that are continuously deployed from master.

I would love to hear the thoughts of contributors on this matter. Whatever the community decides on is fine with me.

[adrianwells]

@davidhaymond, Good points and examples. With the current cadence, removing the development branch seems simpler to maintain. Will plan to remove the development branch. Sounds like drafting a CONTRIBUTING.md is worthwhile.

[davidhaymond]

Thanks, @adrianwells. I can work on drafting CONTRIBUTING.md.