What happened to dev branch?

[tajmone]

Ciao @SicroAtGit, I noticed that there are no longer dev branches on the project.

Wouldn't it make sense to keep a dev baseline branch for incoming pull requests? just to ensure that any contribution is well tested and polished before integrating it into main, and because it allows more freedom in terms of force pushes, rebasing, squashing, etc.

I think that it makes sense to have dev as a fix baseline branch, and then allow specialized development branches for developing features that might take longer before they are ready to integrate.

[SicroAtGit]

Initially, I had intended:

• to set the main branch at GitHub as the default branch. This branch should always have the state of the last tagged release.
• the devel branch was intended for development. Feature branches should be created based on this branch and the feature branches should be merged back into this branch with rebase-merge by pull requests or manually.

The problem was that I could not set GitHub to use a different default branch for forks and pull requests, namely the devel branch.

Since that doesn't work and I then wanted to keep the branching model simple, I switched to the branching model where there is only the main branch. From this feature branches should be created and there they should be merged again with rebase-merge.

But you are right, I should create a devel branch again (will name this branch develop this time, is more common). This develop branch, I set than as the default branch at GitHub. Before the develop branch is merged into main, I can then run git rebase --autosquash beforehand to squash the commits which have correction commits.

I think it should then only be the original commit author making correction commits to their commits via git commit --fixup. I mean, the commits that are then squashed together. This prevents someone else from changing someone else's commit content, otherwise it would be no longer apparent what the original commit author actually contributed with his commit.

[tajmone]

I wouldn't change the default branch, because it can lead to problems. Simply, add a dev (or develop if you fancy verbosity) and ask contributors to set it as the target branch. I know, it sucks because then often people forget to set the target branch to other than the default (i.e. main in this case), but then, if it's a simple commit chances are that it could ho straight into main, otherwise you'll have to ask to create a new pull-request, since there doesn't seem a way to change the target at present.

I've polished the text of the various README files, but I thought it would be best if I create the PR on a dev branch, in case there are afterthoughts or other changes. But if you prefer, I can just make the PR to main.

[SicroAtGit]

@tajmone

Yes, I also like it more when a stable branch is the default branch. I find dev as the branch name good, quite sufficient.

Regarding pull request was created with the wrong target branch. If I understood correctly, the target branch can now be changed afterwards: Changing the base branch of a pull request

I've polished the text of the various README files, but I thought it would be best if I create the PR on a dev branch, in case there are afterthoughts or other changes. But if you prefer, I can just make the PR to main.

I think pull requests that improve documentation and target the main branch are fine.

[SicroAtGit]

I have created a dev branch again.