Name: ml70278 Date: 11/24/99


For the next major release all versions for all platforms will be
developped from a single consolidated source base (see a) below).
However, individual source drops may still be required due to the
way the bug fix / release process is working (see b) below.
In any case, the individual source drops will only differ in minor
details due to late bug fixes. A comparison of the sources will reveal
only minimal changes between different source drops for different
platforms and will not hinder porting or understanding issues.

a) It makes a lot of sense to have a unified source base (workspace)
for both client and server as well as all different platforms during
development. The current workspace structure is already consolidated
and used appropriately.

b) Towards the final releases, workspaces are forked off in order to facilitate the bug fixing and release process, and in order to avoid introducing bugs for one version when fixing bugs for another version. This is imperative, as any forced synchronization will make this process extremely slow and error prone.
Since no major engineering is allowed during this phase, if individual work-
spaces forked off from the consolidated workspace differ at all, they will do
so only in minor details.