What is the Current branch considered?

[pertrai1]

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This is a question in regards to understanding the README.md file. It states:

Nightly: Versions of code in this repository on the current Current branch, automatically built every 24-hours where changes exist. Use with caution.

What exactly is the "Current" branch? That does not make it clear to me what branch this is. Don't know if this is me being new, but thought that this is not easy to decipher.

[addaleax]

What exactly is the "Current" branch?

That would be v7.x (see the definitions for “Current” in the README / https://github.com/nodejs/LTS); but:

Nightly: Versions of code in this repository on the current Current branch, automatically built every 24-hours where changes exist.

I think that’s not true, the SHAs for the nightlies seem to be master SHAs.

[Fishrock123]

I don't think we ever got around to Current branch nightlies. They have only ever been off master.

[evanlucas]

It seems we do for some of them.

https://nodejs.org/download/nightly/

There is a nightly for v6.x, v7.x, and master

[sam-github]

This issue is the inverse of nodejs/Release#174

I think its worth considering incorporating https://github.com/nodejs/LTS/blob/master/README.md into https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/README.md, the distinction between the two is arbitrary from a user of node's perspective, it came about historically because the LTS WG did the work of considering and designing the LTS process, and documented the result in their README. The history is past, the practice they developed is well established, time to move the docs.

The README for the LTS repo can then be rewritten to just have information about the working group organization, its members, policies, etc., instead of information important to users of node.

/cc @williamkapke who recently requested that all WGs have some common features in their READMEs (such as members).

/cc @gibfahn and @Fishrock123 who were wrestling with trying keep the Current docs in nodejs/node, the LTS docs in nodejs/LTS, despite that the two are only understandable as a conceptual pair.

[Trott]

This issue has been inactive for sufficiently long that it seems like perhaps it should be closed. Feel free to re-open (or leave a comment requesting that it be re-opened) if you disagree. I'm just tidying up and not acting on a super-strong opinion or anything like that.

[gibfahn]

I think the minimum this needs is a sentence in https://github.com/nodejs/node#current-and-lts-releases saying "for more info about Current and LTS release, see the LTS Readme"

[gibfahn]

Actually this is totally documented above. @pertrai1 does this paragraph not adequately explain what current means? If not what would you like to see?

Current: Released from active development branches of this repository, versioned by SemVer and signed by a member of the Release Team. Code for Current releases is organized in this repository by major version number. For example: v4.x. The major version number of Current releases will increment every 6 months allowing for breaking changes to be introduced. This happens in April and October every year. Current release lines beginning in October each year have a maximum support life of 8 months. Current release lines beginning in April each year will convert to LTS (see below) after 6 months and receive further support for 30 months.

[pertrai1]

@gibfahn - your minimum sentence that you mention above where the user has a reference link to follow - "LTS Readme" - I think that would be helpful in this situation.

[gibfahn]

@pertrai1 makes sense, let me know if you think #14259 would make things clearer.

I totally didn't see any of this documentation btw, and I've looked at the README a bunch of times. So any feedback we can get on increasing clarity is very helpful.

[pertrai1]

👍 thank you @gibfahn