[p4] branchspec reversed or not?

[Wright, Richard]

While I don't know her exact reasoning for it, here is my guess:

According to her best practices, merges should always go "down".  So, all of
your merging should go from v2.0 to main.  If you consider that creating the
initial branch is a one-time operation, and the merges might happen many
times to keep main up-to-date with the 2.0 bug fixes, then it makes sense to
use the '-r' a single time and then not have to worry about it for the
multiple merges that may be done by multiple people over time.

-Rick

-----Original Message-----
From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
[mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com]On Behalf Of Dan Halbert
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 9:34 AM
To: Perforce-User List
Subject: [p4] branchspec reversed or not?


We are about to do our first major branch in Perforce. I read the 
Perforce technote NOTE004, which explains things quite clearly. We are 
branching from "main" to "v2.0". I can set up a branch spec, called, 
say, "main-v2.0" with a view with lines that look like:

    //depot/ourcode/subproject/main/...    
//depot/ourcode/subproject/v2.0/...

However, I also have a copy of Laura Wingerd's new book, Practical 
Perforce. She calls branch specs "branch views", and her examples are 
all set up in reverse. She might have a branch spec named "v2.0-main", 
with view lines like:

    //depot/ourcode/subproject/v2.0/...    
//depot/ourcode/subproject/main/...

She would do "p4 integ -r -b v2.0-main" in order to handle this reversal.

So, now I'm confused. It seems as if she's introducing a new 
"Better/Best Practices in Perforce" suggestion. She prefers the reversed 
branchspecs, but doesn't really say why that I can see. I'd like to the 
"best thing" going forward. It doesn't really matter so much in this 
case, but can anyone suggestion what her motivation is here?

Dan
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