Move or remove old Blender branches #54

New Issue

blender/blender has many old branches that take up disk space and make it harder to find the right branches. A Blender repository with just the main branch goes from 974MB to 680MB.

Proposal:

Put all existing branches in archive/blender-staging and rename that repository to blender-archive
Remove all branches except a few that are actively developed, LTS branches, and the release branches for the upcoming and current stable release.
Recommend developers to use branches in their own fork when possible, and make it a rule that temporary branches can be deleted and inactive branches moved to blender-archive by any developer, keeping the list of branches short at all times.

We can do the same for forks that now contain unnecessary branches. This would likely be done manually server side. Re-creating forks is problematic as it would break open pull requests.

`blender/blender` has many old branches that take up disk space and make it harder to find the right branches. A Blender repository with just the main branch goes from 974MB to 680MB. Proposal: * Put all existing branches in `archive/blender-staging` and rename that repository to `blender-archive` * Remove all branches except a few that are actively developed, LTS branches, and the release branches for the upcoming and current stable release. * Recommend developers to use branches in their own fork when possible, and make it a rule that temporary branches can be deleted and inactive branches moved to `blender-archive` by any developer, keeping the list of branches short at all times. We can do the same for forks that now contain unnecessary branches. This would likely be done manually server side. Re-creating forks is problematic as it would break open pull requests.

This has been implemented for the main repository.

The forks are unaffected, as some developers (including myself) have some old branches in the fork for the future reference. It would not be cool if we remove a branch which someone wants to keep.

I've attached a script which we used to generate archival and removal of the branches. It could be modified by developers who wants to cleanup their forks. If someone wants to clean up their fork but does not want to have spike in activity we can then do cleanup on the server side.

This has been implemented for the main repository. The forks are unaffected, as some developers (including myself) have some old branches in the fork for the future reference. It would not be cool if we remove a branch which someone wants to keep. I've attached a script which we used to generate archival and removal of the branches. It could be modified by developers who wants to cleanup their forks. If someone wants to clean up their fork but does not want to have spike in activity we can then do cleanup on the server side.

generate_scripts.py

3.3 KiB

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Move or remove old Blender branches #54