mitgcm.org/front_content/cvs_policy.xml

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      <h3>MITgcm CVS policy</h3>
    </center>

    <h4>Introduction</h4>

    This note describes policies that apply to the MITGCM CVS repository.

    <h4>Why have a policy?</h4>

    <p>CVS itself is a liberal free-for-all product that can be used in a
      variety of ways. It is designed to provide a system for storing arbitrary
      files in a way that allows the change history of the individual files to
      be tracked.  If CVS is used without any other policy the result can be a
      collection of files each of which has complex, multiply branched set of
      inter-related versions. This sort of CVS repository can be come like a
      library where books are simply stored in a huge heap. Although nothing is
      actually lost, the task of finding a coherent collection of material soon
      becomes impossible.</p>

    <p>The policies we employ address tree areas
      <ol>
        
        <li>Maintaining an orderly and easily identifiable, coherent set of
          evolving "products".</li>
        
        <li>Allowing concurrent, on-going development of product
          components.</li>
        
        <li>Making the integration of achieved developments easy, rapid,
          organized and clear.</li>
      </ol>
    </p>

    <h4>Development trees and checkpoint trees</h4>

    <p>A directory within the MITGCM repository resides under either the development
      branch or the checkpoint branch. Files within each branch follow different
      policies.</p>

    <h4>Development tree policies</h4>

    <p>Development trees are intended to be flexible areas where arbitrary files
      can be stored with multiple versions, many branches supporting multiple
      ongoing streams of development. Development trees have no policies in
      place to control complexity. Development trees might be associated with a
      particular person, a certain project or a particular special piece of
      work. These trees are intended to be useful areas for storing current work
      and for archiving partially finished work so that it doesn't get mislaid
      and so that some record of the development history can be easily
      maintained. The only policy that applies to development trees is that this
      style of tree is not intended to be used for providing a "checkpoint"
      distribution. Tagged configurations of tools built from this style of tree
      can be distributed, but because these trees do not have any policies
      regarding testing of functionality, platform coverage or documentation
      these trees are not allowed to form the basis of "checkpoint"
      distributions or formal "releases". Other policies can be defined by
      individuals users of these trees but there are no further global
      policies. The MITGCM repository development_tree/ sub-directory is
      reserved for holding development trees. Development trees also serve as
      experimental areas for exploring new code management policies.</p>

    <h4>Checkpoint tree policies</h4>

    <p>Checkpoint trees are intended to provide structured storage areas for
      holding code that is intended for open distribution and is to be readily
      downloaded.  There are policies governing the operation of these trees
      which are designed to ensure that distributed codes are early identified
      and meet certain levels of quality.
      <ol>
        <li><b>Check-out:</b> Just do it! Two mechanisms are available. cvsanon for
          read only access and regular cvs co .... for read/write access.</li>

        <li><b>Check-in</b>: The code check in procedure for a "checkpoint" tree
          is as follows
          
          <ol>
            <li>Check out the latest main branch revision.</li>
            
            <li>Merge your changes into that revision.</li>
            
            <li>Build and validate new code.</li>
            
            <li>Check that there have been no further changes to the
              repository. Repeat from 2.1 if repository has changed.</li>
            
            <li>Get clearance from other developers to check in your
                changes.</li>
            
            <li>Check in your changed main branch.</li>
            
            <li>Build and validate the new changes.</li>
            
            <li>Tag code as "checkpointNN". Add records to docs/tag-index.</li>
        
            <li>Build and validate test cases (see testing).</li>
            
            <li>Create and install checkpointNN.tar.gz</li>
          </ol>
      
          <li><b>Testing</b>: Things in a checkpoint tree require a test case
            that can be used to validate the component.</li>
          
          <li><b>Checkpoint tagging</b>: No code should be left in limbo
            (un-tagged) for extended periods. On the other hand it's unnecessary
            to create a checkpoint tag for every little change. Checkpoint tags
            should be made after a particularly significant code modification or
            otherwise on a regular basis, say bi-weekly. Very often we set a
            list of goals to be reached by the next checkpoint which sometimes
            takes more than two weeks to achieve. Obviously, in this case a
            bi-weekly checkpoint would not be useful.</li>

          <li><b>Release tagging</b>: Releases are only based on checkpoint tree
            code. Maintenance fixes to releases are also maintained within the
            checkpoint tree. Files within a release must have accompanying
            documentation. The form of this documentation depends on the file
            type.</li>

          <li><b>Branches</b>: Branches are a useful tool for making changes
            prior to checkpoints without breaking other working versions but it
            must be understood that branches are short-lived and that releases
            and checkpoints not be made from a branch. Branches are especially
            useful for adding totally <br>new features. bug-fixes to checkpoints
            are introduced by moving checkpoint levels forward. The only
            historical code maintenance that s employed is for fixes and patches
            to formal releases - not checkpoints.</li>
      </ol>

      <h4>Someone checked-in broken code so not my code doesn't work?</h4>

      <p>You have several options:
        <ol>
          <li>Politely email everyone at support@mitgcm.org asking what has
            happened and that it be fixed?</li>

          <li>Figure out why the new code is broken, fix it, check it in and
            proudly send a message to support@mitgcm.org to show how
            constructive you are.</li>

          <li>Complain that the quality of work is too low and then do nothing
            to fix the code.</li>
        </ol>
      </p>
      
      <p>We advise you to only use the third option if you are confident that
        your own contributions to the code are bug-free, well written,
        documented and fool proof.&nbsp; :)</p>

      <h4>These policies are causing me a big problem, what can I do?</h4>
      
      <p>The policies are not enforced by any mechanism other than mutual
        agreement!  If you think the policies are not appropriate then let us
        know and we can discuss changing them. However, if you simply ignore the
        policies regarding the checkpoint_release trees then your code may be
        removed and/or your access revoked.</p>

<!--
      <h4>What about bitkeeper</h4>
      
      <p>We are looking at bitkeeper (www.bitkeeper.com). It looks cool, but
        policies are still important. Any experience, suggestions let us
        know. Watch this space!</p>
-->
      <h4>Questions</h4>

      <p>If you have any questions or suggestions please contact the MITgcm
        developers at <a href="mailto:MITgcm-support@mitgcm.org">
          MITgcm-support@mitgcm.org</a></p>
      
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24
25	<center>
26	<h3>MITgcm CVS policy</h3>
27	</center>
28
29	<h4>Introduction</h4>
30
31	This note describes policies that apply to the MITGCM CVS repository.
32
33	<h4>Why have a policy?</h4>
34
35	<p>CVS itself is a liberal free-for-all product that can be used in a
36	variety of ways. It is designed to provide a system for storing arbitrary
37	files in a way that allows the change history of the individual files to
38	be tracked. If CVS is used without any other policy the result can be a
39	collection of files each of which has complex, multiply branched set of
40	inter-related versions. This sort of CVS repository can be come like a
41	library where books are simply stored in a huge heap. Although nothing is
42	actually lost, the task of finding a coherent collection of material soon
43	becomes impossible.</p>
44
45	<p>The policies we employ address tree areas
46	<ol>
47
48	<li>Maintaining an orderly and easily identifiable, coherent set of
49	evolving "products".</li>
50
51	<li>Allowing concurrent, on-going development of product
52	components.</li>
53
54	<li>Making the integration of achieved developments easy, rapid,
55	organized and clear.</li>
56	</ol>
57	</p>
58
59	<h4>Development trees and checkpoint trees</h4>
60
61	<p>A directory within the MITGCM repository resides under either the development
62	branch or the checkpoint branch. Files within each branch follow different
63	policies.</p>
64
65	<h4>Development tree policies</h4>
66
67	<p>Development trees are intended to be flexible areas where arbitrary files
68	can be stored with multiple versions, many branches supporting multiple
69	ongoing streams of development. Development trees have no policies in
70	place to control complexity. Development trees might be associated with a
71	particular person, a certain project or a particular special piece of
72	work. These trees are intended to be useful areas for storing current work
73	and for archiving partially finished work so that it doesn't get mislaid
74	and so that some record of the development history can be easily
75	maintained. The only policy that applies to development trees is that this
76	style of tree is not intended to be used for providing a "checkpoint"
77	distribution. Tagged configurations of tools built from this style of tree
78	can be distributed, but because these trees do not have any policies
79	regarding testing of functionality, platform coverage or documentation
80	these trees are not allowed to form the basis of "checkpoint"
81	distributions or formal "releases". Other policies can be defined by
82	individuals users of these trees but there are no further global
83	policies. The MITGCM repository development_tree/ sub-directory is
84	reserved for holding development trees. Development trees also serve as
85	experimental areas for exploring new code management policies.</p>
86
87	<h4>Checkpoint tree policies</h4>
88
89	<p>Checkpoint trees are intended to provide structured storage areas for
90	holding code that is intended for open distribution and is to be readily
91	downloaded. There are policies governing the operation of these trees
92	which are designed to ensure that distributed codes are early identified
93	and meet certain levels of quality.
94	<ol>
95	<li><b>Check-out:</b> Just do it! Two mechanisms are available. cvsanon for
96	read only access and regular cvs co .... for read/write access.</li>
97
98	<li><b>Check-in</b>: The code check in procedure for a "checkpoint" tree
99	is as follows
100
101	<ol>
102	<li>Check out the latest main branch revision.</li>
103
104	<li>Merge your changes into that revision.</li>
105
106	<li>Build and validate new code.</li>
107
108	<li>Check that there have been no further changes to the
109	repository. Repeat from 2.1 if repository has changed.</li>
110
111	<li>Get clearance from other developers to check in your
112	changes.</li>
113
114	<li>Check in your changed main branch.</li>
115
116	<li>Build and validate the new changes.</li>
117
118	<li>Tag code as "checkpointNN". Add records to docs/tag-index.</li>
119
120	<li>Build and validate test cases (see testing).</li>
121
122	<li>Create and install checkpointNN.tar.gz</li>
123	</ol>
124
125	<li><b>Testing</b>: Things in a checkpoint tree require a test case
126	that can be used to validate the component.</li>
127
128	<li><b>Checkpoint tagging</b>: No code should be left in limbo
129	(un-tagged) for extended periods. On the other hand it's unnecessary
130	to create a checkpoint tag for every little change. Checkpoint tags
131	should be made after a particularly significant code modification or
132	otherwise on a regular basis, say bi-weekly. Very often we set a
133	list of goals to be reached by the next checkpoint which sometimes
134	takes more than two weeks to achieve. Obviously, in this case a
135	bi-weekly checkpoint would not be useful.</li>
136
137	<li><b>Release tagging</b>: Releases are only based on checkpoint tree
138	code. Maintenance fixes to releases are also maintained within the
139	checkpoint tree. Files within a release must have accompanying
140	documentation. The form of this documentation depends on the file
141	type.</li>
142
143	<li><b>Branches</b>: Branches are a useful tool for making changes
144	prior to checkpoints without breaking other working versions but it
145	must be understood that branches are short-lived and that releases
146	and checkpoints not be made from a branch. Branches are especially
147	useful for adding totally <br>new features. bug-fixes to checkpoints
148	are introduced by moving checkpoint levels forward. The only
149	historical code maintenance that s employed is for fixes and patches
150	to formal releases - not checkpoints.</li>
151	</ol>
152
153	<h4>Someone checked-in broken code so not my code doesn't work?</h4>
154
155	<p>You have several options:
156	<ol>
157	<li>Politely email everyone at support@mitgcm.org asking what has
158	happened and that it be fixed?</li>
159
160	<li>Figure out why the new code is broken, fix it, check it in and
161	proudly send a message to support@mitgcm.org to show how
162	constructive you are.</li>
163
164	<li>Complain that the quality of work is too low and then do nothing
165	to fix the code.</li>
166	</ol>
167	</p>
168
169	<p>We advise you to only use the third option if you are confident that
170	your own contributions to the code are bug-free, well written,
171	documented and fool proof.  :)</p>
172
173	<h4>These policies are causing me a big problem, what can I do?</h4>
174
175	<p>The policies are not enforced by any mechanism other than mutual
176	agreement! If you think the policies are not appropriate then let us
177	know and we can discuss changing them. However, if you simply ignore the
178	policies regarding the checkpoint_release trees then your code may be
179	removed and/or your access revoked.</p>
180
181	<!--
182	<h4>What about bitkeeper</h4>
183
184	<p>We are looking at bitkeeper (www.bitkeeper.com). It looks cool, but
185	policies are still important. Any experience, suggestions let us
186	know. Watch this space!</p>
187	-->
188	<h4>Questions</h4>
189
190	<p>If you have any questions or suggestions please contact the MITgcm
191	developers at <a href="mailto:MITgcm-support@mitgcm.org">
192	MITgcm-support@mitgcm.org</a></p>
193
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