Getting and using the develop branch

It's probably time to start using the 'develop' branch. Here is the why & how:

What are the two main git branches in GISMO?

There are two main git branches to the GISMO project called "master" and "develop":

'master' is always the latest 'release' of GISMO. It gets updated about every 1-2 years, so can be a long way behind the bleeding edge. GISMO has been used for real-time operations at the Alaska Volcano Observatory in the past, where a stable version of GISMO (the 'master' branch) was essential.

'develop' is that bleeding-edge. I always use 'develop', since I am actively developing GISMO in response to the needs of my own research group, and GISMO Users asking questions by email or posting issues on the GitHub Issue Tracker. But the 'develop' branch has not been tested. Things are more likely to break.

To create a new release of GISMO, the develop branch is put through a series of tests to iron out as many bugs as possible. This is very time consuming, which is why it doesn't happen very often. To learn more about releases, and the 'master' and 'develop' branches, see Creating-new-releases-versions.

Why should I use 'develop' ?

The two original developers, Celso Reyes and Mike West, left the GISMO project around a decade ago. I try to keep it alive as a back burner project, though I began transitioning to ObsPy in 2012. As stated above, updating the master branch involves a lot of work, which I do not have time for more than once every year or so. So if you are on the master branch, there is really no way to help you.

What this boils down to is if you want help, you will probably need to switch to the 'develop' branch too.

How do I get 'develop' ?

If you downloaded GISMO from the MathWorks File Exchange, you are on the master branch. You can get a ZIP file of the current 'develop' branch from the link: [https://github.com/geoscience-community-codes/GISMO/archive/refs/heads/develop.zip]. Install this in exactly the same way as in the Getting started guide.

If you are using git, which I highly recommend, all you need to do is to switch to the 'develop' branch is:

git clone https://github.com/geoscience-community-codes/GISMO.git GISMO
cd GISMO
git checkout develop
cd ..

If you already cloned GISMO, skip that first line above.

To periodically update the 'develop' branch, just pull the changes:

cd GISMO
git pull

For example, if you asked for help, I might have just 'pushed' changes to GitHub. You will need to 'pull' them, to get those changes on your computer.

by Glenn Thompson, May 2021