Branching Policy

The main line of development is the master branch in the primary repository. Occasionally when we are working on two versions at the same time, there will also be a next branch, which represents the main line of development for the release after the upcoming one. In this case only bug-fixes and well-tested or non-disruptive changes will go into the master branch.

Developers who want to work on a new feature or a bug-fix are requested to created a new topic branch based either on the master or the next branch. If there is a next branch, it usually should be chosen over the master branch. But when in doubt, please ask on the development forum.

The topic branch shall be given a short, descriptive, all-lowercase name.

Additional topic branches should branch of from master/next, unless they depend on another topic branch.

Once a topic branch is ready, the developer should issue a pull request on github into the master/next branch of the primary repository. If you are unsure if the branch is ready, ask on the forum first.