git branching

[fzahle]

I know this is a matter of taste, but I would really prefer to stop using a develop branch. It adds confusion and is in my opinion not needed. Instead, main should be bleeding edge functional code, but not necessarily released with a tag each time a PR is accepted.

We have not used tags very much and simply expected people to just use main, but once we setup workflows to publish to pypi, tagging will become a more natural part of our workflows, since it'll be the only systematic way for our respective packages to interface to WindIO.

[rafmudaf]

Good point @fzahle, I agree that having a develop branch for windIO is excessive. The flow you propose of merging all pull requests into main and creating tags infrequently is essentially the same but simpler than maintaining a develop branch that merges infrequently to main.

A benefit of the develop / main combo is that there's always a stable branch for non-developers to look at. This is most beneficial in projects with a high frequency of activity or during periods of drastic change. Since windIO currently has neither, I agree with this suggestion. If a dedicated develop branch is needed in the future, it is trivial to adopt it.

@kenloen what's your opinion?

[ptrbortolotti]

for what it's worth, I fully agree with @rafmudaf

[rafmudaf]

It sounds like we have agreement that one branch, main, should be maintained as the primary branch. Pull requests will generally be made to main from a working branch. Periodically, commits on main will be tagged as a release.

Given the consensus, I will merge the current develop into main and update the existing pull requests accordingly. The affected PRs will be: #61, #62, #74, #79, #80. Then, I'll delete the develop branch. Since it's a somewhat intrusive change, I'll wait until someone else gives me a thumbs up.

[kenloen]

I fully agree with the change from using develop and main to just have main and using tags for releases.
I do not have the full overview of the develop branch or if this leads to major changes to the main if they are merged. But I guess we can go ahead and make a pull request for it and discuss any details in that.

[rafmudaf]

Ah good point @kenloen. I had intended to merge it manually, but there are a few things in develop that aren't in main. I'll create that pull request now.

[rafmudaf]

Heads up - #82 is merged and the develop branch is deleted. Feel free to reach out if there's any issues with your local repositories.