Proposal: Move to develop+master branch + tags for future releases

[gdevenyi]

Currently, we have at least two "develop" branches on the go, which have been diverging from master and each other.

I'm doing updates and I'd like to work out a new release, but I'm not sure how I would achieve this right now.

I'd like to propose moving to a develop (PRs against develop, active dev goes there) + master (stable branch, merge develop periodically when "known good"), and tag releases on master.

Thoughts @vfonov? Others?

[gdevenyi]

This would also enable a bit more continuous integration (and maybe even auto-builds on release...)

[vfonov]

well, I am stuck with switching to ITK-5, too many breaking changes

[gdevenyi]

Perhaps that would be "feature branch to be eventually merged into develop"?

Is there a todo/list of things I could potentially help with for the ITK5 porting?

[bcdarwin]

What packages remain to be ported -- EZminc and ABC?

[edit: EZminc has already been ported to 5.0 but needs tweaking for 5.2]

[bcdarwin]

I agree that the current branching model is leading to stale/unbuildable branches -- potentially could be fixed by having bots look for certain tags and automatically backporting but a simpler model is probably better.

[gdevenyi]

Also worth asking, for the ITK software, can we upstream anything that isn't ours, since MINC is "first class" in ITK?

[bcdarwin]

These days I already use upstream ANTs/Elastix/c3d (which have moved to ITK5) with no problems (except the usual disagreement between mnc2nii and ITK coordinate system conversion).

[vfonov]

i had trouble with elastix , because the version in minc-toolkit contains my modifications to output minc .xfm files.
Also, I had to disable everything related to diffeomorphic demons.

[gdevenyi]

These days I already use upstream ANTs/Elastix/c3d (which have moved to ITK5) with no problems (except the usual disagreement between mnc2nii and ITK coordinate system conversion).

We Can Rebuilld Him, We Have the Technology

InsightSoftwareConsortium/ITK#147

[gdevenyi]

So, can we coordinate on a next step for development?

1. What happens on master branch? Do we merge 1.9.18.2?
2. Can merge 1.9.18-develop into 1.9.19-develop and continue work there?