Re: Upstream synchronization documentation

[Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com>]

Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.homelinux.net> writes:

> I just noticed that your text talks about 'backporting', and wondered if 
> that is the clearest term to use.  To me, a 'backport' usually means 
> porting a change or fix from the master or development branch to some 
> older or more stable branch.

Right.  Thanks for bringing this up.

> Whereas in your text I think it is the other way round, isn't it?
> (I.e. the Emacs branch is more stable, and you are talking about
> porting a fix that someone has made in that branch to the Org master.)
> So perhaps 'forward port' would be clearer?

I suspect that Org's maint (where the Emacs changes land) is generally
more stable than the Org in Emacs's master, but, yes, Emacs's version is
the older version.  (Well, with v9.0.9 just synced the versions match,
but maint still has quite a few more commits.)

Since before I took over "backporting" changes from the Emacs repo, it's
been referred to as this.  Although I agree it isn't great word choice,
I'd prefer that we remain consistent so that, for example, "git log -i
--grep=backport" remains informative.

But if people think using "backport" is too confusing, I'm OK switching
to another term.  Of "forward port" and "propagate" (suggested in this
thread by Eric), I prefer "propagate"---or maybe just "port", though
grepping for that might lead to too many false positives.  And if we
stick with "backport", it still might be a good idea to clarify in
README_maintainer that we're abusing the term.

-- 
Kyle