There's a perfectly good reason for this [LWN.net]

There's a perfectly good reason for this

Posted Aug 19, 2004 4:47 UTC (Thu) by ruin8tr (subscriber, #16593)
Parent article: Parallel forks

It is because you just invented the term "parallel fork". In the rest of the development universe these are called "branches". They don't generate much news because they represent multiple lines of development of the same project.

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There's a perfectly good reason for this

Posted Aug 19, 2004 6:59 UTC (Thu) by lacostej (guest, #2760) [Link]

I agree with you and I don't like the word parallel forks.
But the word branches is really generic and is used to talk about very different things.

I would have preferred something like "synchronized branches" or something that retains the word branch while adding the idea that these are longed lived branches. Maybe parralel branch if the word is to be taken from the article.

In fact there are even different ways in which these forks/branches are made:
- every now and then, a new branch is made and the collection of patches maintained localy are updated then applied onto that new local branch
- or the branch is created once and maintained. For each release the updates on the trunc are ported onto the branch.

Most projects probably pick solution 1

I would think that a parralel branch/fork would better describe the solution number 2. I don't find a good expression to identify solution number 1.

There's a perfectly good reason for this

Posted Aug 20, 2004 9:06 UTC (Fri) by jdthood (guest, #4157) [Link]

> I don't like the word parallel forks

I do. Parallel lines don't diverge.

There's a perfectly good reason for this

Posted Aug 19, 2004 7:14 UTC (Thu) by mathijs (subscriber, #4948) [Link]

fwiw, I'd say a branch denotes a fork which is maintained within the same version control system. It doesn't seem that unsensible to coin a new phrase for forks which behave a bit 'branchy' ;)