This page is one of many describing EvaluationFeatures that may be useful when comparing monotone to other similar (and not-so-similar) VCS systems.

Description

Import external sources from third-party vendors, and allow tracking and sensible merging of local changes with future vendor releases.

Supported

Any branch can be used as a Vendor Branch. Unlike CVS, vendor branches are not treated specially in monotone. (This CVS feature with a single branch which behaves "magically" has now come to be seen fairly widely as a mistake.)

There are two aspects to this requirement that are often used together:

  • tracking "pristine" external sources in a separate branch
  • using the sources in such a branch as part of a larger derivative project

Example Usage

The VendorBranchPattern page contains detailed recommendations for BestPractices in how this should be done.

Further Reference

Features and Requirements in other evaluations: