2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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fork
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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In the open-source community, a is what occurs when two (or more) versions
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of a software package's source code are being developed in parallel which
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once shared a common code base, and these multiple versions of the source
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code have irreconcilable differences between them. This should not be
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confused with a development branch, which may later be folded back into the
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original source code base. Nor should it be confused with what happens when
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a new distribution of Linux or some other distribution is created, because
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that largely assembles pieces than can and will be used in other
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distributions without conflict. Forking is uncommon; in fact, it is so
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uncommon that individual instances loom large in hacker folklore. Notable in
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this class were the Emacs/XEmacs , the GCC/EGCS (later healed by a merger)
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and the s among the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD operating systems.
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