New node type - Branch (a set of jobs).

[timurhai]

For now it exists only in master repo.
Later it will be in 2.3.0 release.
I wrote documentation for it:

http://cgru.info/afanasy/branch

- Is it clear?
- Any mistakes?
- Spelling?

[lithorus]

Really nice feature. Can't wait to use it in production

Should we let it replace the project attribute?

A few spelling mistakes, will submit a pull request later

[lithorus]

One thing though I noticed with branches. It should be configurable to set a root from which it should create branches from.

Eg. if you have mounted '/mnt/servers/A/projectB' it would give you alot of sub branches which adds no value.

[timurhai]

Hi.
We are already using 2.3.0 with branches for about 3 weeks.
It seems to be working normally.
For now only 1 new bug - afserver on exit can hung (sigsegv), but only on exit (may be some double free on branches deletion that i will fix some later).

Configurable root - good idea.
How do you think, we should configure it on a client or server side, or may be both?
I should be some path "/mnt/servers/A" that should be cut from the beginning of the string?
Or may be some mask (regexp)?
Or like a path map, search and replace strings pair(s)?

[lithorus]

Hmm... I think it should be when it evaluates which branch to parent, so server side? Perhaps x amount of levels to ignore and OS specific. Either way it's always possible to override it when submitting I guess..

[timurhai]

If you will have /mnt/servers/A/projectB along with /mnt/servers/B/projectF we need something like paths mapping.
So i think it should be client side.
I want any soft (on my job) knows project and some scene/shot/asset that artist working with (and soon will implement this).
So branches that are scene file location by default can be easily set by af.Job.setBranch(any_string) to any smarter location.
So, now i think that it should be on client side only, let server be simpler and so more reliable.

[lithorus]

Sounds good.

If people need to use this for site seperation they likely have their own submitters and can set the branch manually.