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Feature branches are used to develop new features without destabilizing the rest of Hive. The intent of a feature branch is that it will be merged back into master once the feature has stabilized.
For general information about Hive branches, see Hive Versions and Branches.
Hadoop Dependencies
The Hive build downloads a number of different Hadoop versions via Maven in order to compile "shims" which allow for compatibility with these Hadoop versions. However, by default, the rest of Hive is only built and tested against a single Hadoop version (1.2.1 as of this writing, but check pom.xml for the latest).
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<branch-name> is only required if it is not master. (See Understanding Hive Branches above.)
So the first patch for JIRA HIVE-9999 intended to be applied to master would be named "HIVE-9999.patch".
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