Re: [linuxtools-dev] Supporting nightly updates for previous release

[Chris Aniszczyk <caniszczyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:50 PM, Jeff Johnston <jjohnstn@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I was briefly discussing this with Andrew, but thought I would pose the idea
> here for comment.
>
> At present, we are building nightly updates from trunk.  For the most part,
> this isn't a problem.  However, when we make any changes that require latest
> versions of underlying plugins (e.g. we use a new platform interface or we
> switch to requiring latest CDT, Mylyn, etc..), then nightly updates may no
> longer apply to the previous release as they don't meet prereqs.
>
> I would like to propose that we support multiple versions of a plugin on the
> update site where necessary so that the previous release of Eclipse can
> still acquire nightly updates.

So I assume you simply build from trunk using PDE Build (or Athena)?
Have you considered moving to map files as a way to build things? You
would always build from tags that are specified in the map files (this
is how the Eclipse platform team builds things). You branch on
specific releases to support them as need be (e.g., look at some of
the R3_4* branches for the Eclipse platform). You have specific builds
for each maintenance branch you want to support.

In the end, it really depends how long do you want to support old
releases. Smaller projects generally have the flexibility to only
support the current release (which makes things easier) but as you
grow and become more of a platform... you may need to be considerate
about people running on older versions of Eclipse.

-- 
Cheers,

Chris Aniszczyk
http://aniszczyk.org
+1 860 839 2465