Abstract

A variation of the Subversion "vendor branch" strategy for maintaining Cocoon releases under local version control.

Motivation

1. Control of local modifications (patches, additions to lib/local)
2. Being able to easily see what changed from release to release
3. Import into the repository only what we need for production builds:
   • selected blocks only
   • no samples
   • no documentation

Overview

This is a variation on the Subversion "vendor branch" strategy. It differs from the technique outlined in the book, in that we don't have a single main branch into which we merge vendor drops. We want to be able to assimilate a new Cocoon release without forcing all of our Cocoon application to upgrade, so we have a main branch for each Cocoon release that we bring in. That way, we can port each of our applications to a new Cocoon only if and when we need to do so.

I started using this system with the Cocoon 2.1.6 release and have been using it through 2.1.8.

Details

1. mkdir /usr/local/Cocoon/drop
2. cd /usr/local/Cocoon/drop
3. download and explode the Cocoon release tarball for the current release into this directory.
4. Prune the source tree! Delete the following files and directories in src/ (note, this is right for 2.1.6, check it for each version; also, YMMV e.g. you might need to keep something in deprecated/. Also, if you want to delete sources for blocks you know you will never, ever, need, you can do that here as well):
   • documentation/
   • samples/
   • resources/javadoc/
   • in webapp/ everything except WEB-INF/ and sitemap.xmap
   • blocks/*/samples/
   • deprecated/
     
5. Build it (to make sure it builds)
   build.sh webapp
   
6. Clean it. We only want to control sources not derived objects (e.g. class files)
   build.sh clean
   
7. Import the drop.
   
   • For the initial drop (e.g., 2.1.6):

     setenv cocoon_svn file:///var/svn/repos/cocoon # (example setenv cocoon_new_release cocoon-2.1.6 # (example) cd /usr/local/Cocoon/drop svn import -m "Initial drop (cocoon-2.1.6)" $cocoon_svn/dist/$cocoon_new_release

     
     
   • For subsequent drops:

     setenv cocoon_svn file:///var/svn/repos/cocoon # (example) setenv cocoon_new_release cocoon-2.1.7 # (example) setenv cocoon_prev_release cocoon-2.1.6 # (example) cd /usr/local/Cocoon/drop svn_load_dirs.pl -t $cocoon-new-release \ $cocoon_svn/dist \ current \ ./$cocoon-new-release

     
     
8. Create the new main branch and check it out:

   svn copy -m "Create main branch" \ $cocoon_svn/dist/$cocoon-new-release \ $cocoon_svn/main/$cocoon-new-release cd /usr/local/Cocoon/builds # (create this if it's the first time) svn checkout $cocoon_svn/main/$cocoon-new-release cd $cocoon-new-release

   
   
9. Merge in changes from the previous main branch (only if this isn't the initial drop!

   svn merge $cocoon_svn/dist/$cocoon-prev-release $cocoon_svn/main/$cocoon-prev-release

   
   
10. Resolve any conflicts and commmit;
11. Build Cocoon
12. Delete /usr/local/Cocoon/drop
    

Reader comments

Add 'em here, or email me --ML