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! (smile) 
    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

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