The idea behind the naming was the idea that the "modern" branch would drop all the old hardware that is no longer available, making it easier to develop and test. Presumably this would be the branch that the Google changes would continue on in. I'd assumed from previous conversations that the preference for the "classic" branch would be to drop those Google changes. Assuming that the split does happen this way, I'm pretty sure that both trees would see continued development.
Hopefully, both branches would be stable - modern through hardware testing, and classic by rigorous review and a slower development pace since not everything is available to test.
I do agree that the trees would probably diverge quickly an no longer be compatible unless some APIs were developed to keep everything well contained.
Martin
Hi flashrom fellows,
something that's on the agenda for the next dev meeting (30th June)[1]:
Should we look at forking flashrom between version 2 (Classic,
Legacy, or “Stable” flashrom) and version3 of flashrom (Modern,
Tested or Contemporary), where new features are added?
I think such a question deserves more attention, hence this email.
My own thoughts about the topic are quite mixed. First of all, it's
not the first time the idea to work on two branches comes up. When we
switched to Git and Gerrit in 2017, we started with a `stable` and a
`staging` branch[2].
There were reservations, of course. Most of all that the `staging`
branch could fall out-of-sync quickly, so it would be too hard to
port anything from there to `stable`. Maybe such problems could be
be avoided by allowing merges from `stable` to `staging`.
Eventually, we had a lot of new patches on the `staging` branch,
including many fixups, so the features could have been ported to
`stable`. But they were not, and we renamed `staging` to `master`
instead. This was due to personal issues and not technical ones,
though. I guess we can't really say if the branch model failed.
Now to the current proposition. Again, we have the idea to have
one more and one less stable branch. But this time they would
drift apart on purpose, focusing on different subsets of program-
mers and chips, AIUI.
I would not object to continue development on two branches.
Personally, I would most likely work on the stable "version 2"
only. However, the naming would really be a tough nut to crack.
Given my experience with this project, I would expect a branch
that focuses on stability to be the more "modern" one very soon.
Simply because it's much easier to add new features to something
stable.
I wouldn't mind if people try such a "version 3". But it seems
risky. I fear it might lose focus quickly and be abandoned again.
Cheers,
Nico
[1]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18qKvEbfPszjsJJGJhwi8kRVDUG3GZkADzQSH6WFsKqw/
[2]
https://www.flashrom.org/index.php?title=Development_Guidelines&oldid=2252#Branches
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