Branching strategy

[jrfnl]

As development has recently been more active than in the previous years, I'd like to discuss the branches used.

Currently, the repository uses one main branch, which is called master.

Proposal

• Rename master to main.
• Add a develop branch and make that the default branch.
• Make both main as well as develop protected branches which require certain status checks to have passed.

Proposed workflow

• The main branch would always contain the last release and should only receive a pull request when releasing a new version.
• The develop branch is where PRs are pulled to and where regular merges happen.

Proposed timeline

• Enact the above once the 1.8.0 release has been tagged.

Opinions ?

[jrfnl]

Side-note for completeness: there is also an orphan gh-pages branch for the website, but that's not a branch used for regular development.

[TimothyBJacobs]

Shouldn't it be trunk? https://make.wordpress.org/core/2020/06/18/proposal-update-all-git-repositories-to-use-main-instead-of-master/

[jrfnl]

@TimothyBJacobs I'm not fussed about the name, just think 2.0 would be a good time to do it.

I do think this project can choose its own branch name though as it is a stand-alone project which is used far more widely than just in a WP context.

[schlessera]

If we go with both a development branch and a branch with the current latest release, I'd suggest naming the latter stable instead of main.

This way, going for the stable tag always gives you exactly that.

[jrfnl]

@schlessera Happy to use stable.

I use stable in my own repos as well for the exact same reason. Chose that before main became the "common" replacement name and before the change to trunk was announced.

[jrfnl]

Reminder for when this gets actioned:

• Update CI badges to point to the new name for master.
• Update download links and other references to branch names in README, CONTRIBUTING, docs and the GH Pages site.

[jrfnl]

PR #490 contains the in-repo changes needed as per the above comment.

The GH Pages branch will be (should be) updated on the next release.