Where to find info about maintain forks (branch, but not a repo-branch) of code where both are developing separately?

Question

I'm looking for advice on a code maintenance situation I expect is common, but difficult to describe in three words, so difficult to find info about online. Note that I'm talking about a code project branching, but not in the sense of a 'subversion branch'.

There's an existing software product that is still being developed. Another team (me) wants to take the latest release of the code and use it in another product.

We'll also make changes to the code, then want to take new releases (with ease), and maybe give some changes back to the original team.

Can anyone direct me at articles outlining principals for making all this as easy as possible.

Answer 1

You could do this as a repository branch. Your team checks out a branch of the project and then writes your code there. When you want to give your changes back to the original team you can merge the branches. There is plenty of documentation about that process on the internet but it isn't fun.

Another solution typically used by larger companies is to have the second team be an internal customer of the first team's project. The internal customer can make feature requests and even send members over to implement their requests but the internal customer doesn't actually modify the source code, they simply use the other team's releases. Even this can be complicated as you have to worry about lining up your releases and performing integration testing with each release the other team makes.