[Labs-l] Getting rid of the test branch - get ready for a slight workflow change!

[Andrew Bogott]

On 6/19/12 6:49 PM, Ryan Lane wrote:
> Thanks to the new puppetmaster::self support
> (https://labsconsole.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:SelfHostedPuppet), it's
> not necessary to merge changes into the test branch for them to apply
> for testing. Today I merged all changes from production into the test
> branch and sometime soon I'll be merging the remaining changes from
> the test branch into the production branch. When this occurs, I'll
> switch Labs to use the production branch by default.
>
Reconciling the diff between 'test' and 'production' sounds fantastic.  
But... won't there still be cases where a test branch is needed?  For 
example, I sometimes like to run tests on a fresh instance in order to 
make sure that I can build the configuration in a single, clean run.  If 
I can only test my changes on a system that has puppetmaster::self 
installed, then that machine is no longer 'fresh'.

Clearly having a per-project puppetmaster (with a project-specific 
branch) is a better solution than having a global test branch... but in 
the meantime I'm not sure I'm ready to give up having a place where I 
can push patches and know that I won't accidentally take the 
encyclopedia offline.

-A