bulia byak wrote:
However, I feel that this is still a good occasion to state what I have stated: DO NOT COMMIT if you will be unable to support your change at least for the length of one full release cycle, and especially if you can't be on guard for the first few weeks when most of the bugs are found.
Subversion has a reputation for much improved for branching and merging, so long- and short-lived branches may be more usable for inkscape development than they were under CVS.
Perhaps the rule of thumb should be to use a branch for anything that has potential for non-trivial regression, whether the original committer is around to fix it or not. Keep merging the trunk to the branch while developing; when the feature is known regression-free, merge it to the trunk. The single/few feature commits will be easier to revert if needed.
FWIW, having a naming convention and retirement policy for branches becomes important if they are heavily used.