Tidy up non-active branches

[nickrandolph]

There are currently 118 branches with no coherent branching strategy.

To make it easier for contributors, please:

• purge non-active branches
• adopt a model where contributors (all) work in private forks and push all changes via a PR to the main WCT repo
• if some contributors continue to work on main repo, please propose a branching strategy that makes sense

[ghost]

Hello nickrandolph, thank you for opening an issue with us!

I have automatically added a "needs triage" label to help get things started. Our team will analyze and investigate the issue, and escalate it to the relevant team if possible. Other community members may also look into the issue and provide feedback 🙌

[Kyaa-dost]

@nickrandolph Thanks for highlighting the issue. We will discuss these options and explore ways we can improvise the process 🙌

[michael-hawker]

As a note to my future self, we should also document how we work with branches and what our current active branches are.

[nickrandolph]

cc @nmetulev @hermitdave @cbarkerms @clairernovotny @VisualByteStudios @deltakosh @jwilcox1701 @normesta @rjmurillo @TGoodhew @JustinXinLiu
Can you please review any branches that you have and delete them if they're no longer relevant. If relevant, can you rebase them so we know they're still active
I know this is a road map item but the admin responsibility shouldn't just fall on @michael-hawker

[michael-hawker]

Thanks @nickrandolph, @Kyaa-dost @RosarioPulella and I went quickly over them this morning as well, there are a lot I know from some folks which are just stale and we can get rid of from past projects too. 🙂

@Kyaa-dost I think you have the right permissions to get rid of ones from tgoodhew, rjmurillo, and jwilcox1701 that we know are all from past projects?

[TGoodhew]

If you need me to I'm happy to delete those old dead decaying and, frankly, somewhat smelly branches with tgoodhew on them.

[Kyaa-dost]

Thanks, @michael-hawker will clean it up. @TGoodhew if you have any stale branches that are closed or non-active please feel free to delete them, thanks 😄

[TGoodhew]

Just tried - Looks like I don't have permissions - Sorry

[nickrandolph]

@Kyaa-dost / @azchohfi are you able to assist @TGoodhew with tidying up branches?

[Kyaa-dost]

@nickrandolph Yes, all clear!

[michael-hawker]

Things are looking a lot better now, appreciate everyone's help on this project!

Wondering if we want to close down write access to the repo to force people to have to submit from forks? Thoughts?

[Kyaa-dost]

Wondering if we want to close down write access to the repo to force people to have to submit from forks? Thoughts?

I think that's a great idea as there is still a possibility of mishaps. This will be one way to stop and we can always provide Write access to individuals based on requests or severity of the work.

[Nirmal4G]

I propose that we use git flow for branching strategy and Fork-PR model for contributing.

• Only have master, develop, release branches in the main repo.
• Then have specific hotfix and feature branches according to severity of the work so that the other contributors know what's happening.
• Experiments and regular contributions can still happen via Fork-PR model.

Also, with explosion of the UWP Controls projects, the naming of folders is becoming long with Microsoft.Toolkit prefixing everywhere. May be a subfolder organization might do some good.

[michael-hawker]

@Nirmal4G yeah. I'm thinking of locking down write access on the main repo, as we can just fork and do PRs for the things we need, and only admins do the release work anyway currently.

There's a couple of branches we can't delete (one of them is odd and like a zombie (https://github.com/windows-toolkit/WindowsCommunityToolkit/tree/DwayneUWPCTKSandbox - can't get rid of it).

Going to close this issue for now. @Kyaa-dost we should probably open up an issue around this topic and better guidance in our Wiki repo from the governance side.

At least from an action of the original intent of the issue, I think we're good. Thanks for the help @nickrandolph!

[DLamb-MagicLeap]

The zombie branch with my name in it looks like it might have been an experimental branch I created back when we were first learning how to add pages to the Toolkit. I am pretty confident that there is nothing important in there if you are able to kill it from your end.