Branch-naming convention#
Our branch-naming convention ensures software can be built by our CI and tested easily by other developers.
Every Git repository’s README file should state which branch-naming convention is used and any deviations from the norm.
Click-Packages#
Software exclusively distributed as a click-package (and not also as a DEB) only uses one master
branch that is protected. Separate temporary development branches with arbitrary descriptive names can be created and merged into master when the time comes. Ideally Git tags or GitHub releases should be used to mark and archive milestones in the development history.
DEB Packages#
To help us deliver our code into Ubuntu Touch as effortlessly as possible, our CI automatically build our Git repositories into a number of APT archives hosted at http://repo.ubports.com/, according to the branch name.
We maintain the following branches across Git repositories:
Git branches |
Description |
Corresponding APT archives |
|
---|---|---|---|
Name |
Base distro |
||
|
Represents the latest development of Ubuntu Touch. All kinds of changes are allowed in this branch. |
|
Latest or upcoming Ubuntu LTS. |
|
Debian testing. |
||
|
Represents the code in a particular
major version. It branches off of
the |
|
Ubuntu LTS at the time of branching. |
|
A special case of
|
|
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. |
|
Branches which use the deprecated «branch extensions» system for cross-components changes. No longer recommended for usage. |
|
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. |
|
All other branches may be used for proposing merge requests or for other reasons. Theses branches are not built by the CI unless proposed as a merge request. |
N/A, unless proposed as an MR against aforementioned branches (see below). |
To ensure the main
branch doesn’t miss any changes, all changes must be made against main
branch first before backporting to the major release branches. An exception is when a change is not applicable to the main
branch anymore due to other changes in that branch.
Nota
If the next development version is not available for testing yet, and you need the change to be made available for install for testing, it’s allowed to temporarily target the changeset to the major version branch to get packages built against that version. When the changeset is ready for merge, the changeset must be re-targeted to the main
branch.
APT archives for Merge Requests#
In addition to archives mentioned above, we also create APT archives for MRs made against our Git repositories. This allows us to test the result of the build on real devices using ubports-qa before merging the code. For each MR, the CI will build the code against all the same targets as the MR’s target branch, and then will append _-_PR_<repository name>_<MR number>
to them [1]. For example:
An MR numbered 100 made against the
main
branch of Git repositorylomiri
(when the current Ubuntu LTS isnoble
) will have APT archives nameddevel-noble_-_PR_lomiri_100
anddevel-debian_-_PR_lomiri_100
.An MR numbered 125 made against the
ubports/24.6.x
branch of Git repositorymorph-browser
will have an APT archive named24.6.x_-_PR_morph-browser_125
.