What to call the new branch(es) field on the pacticipant and should it be an array or a string?

[bethesque]

I have recently added but not officially released the mainDevelopmentBranches property on the pacticipant. It is an array of strings, and is meant to represent the name(s) of the long lived, non-feature branches that the provider should verify for every build. I am currently unsure on the name of the field and whether or not to make it an array or a string.

Whatever it is called, I am planning that it will be used for a few things.

• In the consumer version selectors, instead of { "branch": "main" } (which requires the provider to know the branch names that the consumer uses), the provider will be able to say { "mainDevelopmentBranches": true } (or whatever name we decide to call it).
• With the proposed new "auto select pacts for verification feature", when autoSelect: true is specified, the pacts for the main dev branches will be automatically returned (see discussion here)
• When autoSelect: true, whether or not to return the WIP pacts could be determined based on whether or not the provider is on its mainDevelopmentBranch. Maybe? Unsure about this.
• When a webhook is triggered a new parameter ${pactbroker.matchingFeatureBranchOrMainDevelopmentBranch} could be added to allow the webhook to target a particular branch of the provider (see https://pact.canny.io/feature-requests/p/support-feature-branch-matching-for-webhook-triggered-builds). This could only use one main branch value, which makes me think that this mainDevelopmentBranches (array) should just be mainDevelopmentBranch (String).

Questions:

• Am I trying to do two many things with one field?
• Should the different interests be split into different properties?
• Is there a better name for the field?
  • trunkBranch?

[bethesque]

Giving this more thought. I'm going to remove mainDevelopmentBranches and replace it with one property for "branches to verify" and a separate one for "webhook target branch".

[bethesque]

I ended up calling this field "main branch", but having come to do the implementation, I'm concerned it might be confusing. If someone looks at the selector { mainBranch: true }, but their main branch is "develop" or "master", the fact that the selector has "main" in it might lead to the impression that it's selecting based on the name "main" rather than the function of the branch (to be the main line of development). Considering changing it to "development branch" before it goes too far.

Field called "main branch", used with branch named "main"

Configure consumer:

create-or-update-pacticipant --name Foo --main-branch "main"

Provider configuration:

consumer_version_selectors: [{ mainBranch: true }]

Verification output:

The pact at http://pact is being verified because the pact content belongs to the 
consumer version matching the following criterion:
    * latest version from the main branch 'main' (655e9dd52eaaafb97675d432f20cd57667c3b20b)

Field called "main branch", used with branch named "master"

Configure consumer:

create-or-update-pacticipant --name Foo --main-branch "master"

Provider configuration:

consumer_version_selectors: [{ mainBranch: true }]

Verification output:

The pact at http://pact is being verified because the pact content belongs to the 
consumer version matching the following criterion:
    * latest version from the main branch 'master' (655e9dd52eaaafb97675d432f20cd57667c3b20b)

[bethesque]

Also, when using something like Git flow, the "main branch" would be "develop" not "main" https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/gitflow-workflow#:~:text=The%20overall%20flow%20of%20Gitflow,branch%20is%20created%20from%20main&text=When%20a%20feature%20is%20complete%20it%20is%20merged%20into%20the,branch%20is%20created%20from%20main

[bethesque]

Or "development branch"

Field called "development branch", used with branch "master"

Configure consumer:

create-or-update-pacticipant --name Foo --development-branch "master"

Provider configuration:

consumer_version_selectors: [{ developmentBranch: true }]

Verification output:

The pact at http://pact is being verified because the pact content belongs to the 
consumer version matching the following criterion:
    * latest version from the development branch 'master' (655e9dd52eaaafb97675d432f20cd57667c3b20b)