4. Particular case: building of SURFEX OFFLINE version 8

In the prospect of the new official version 8 of SURFEX, concerning the base of automatic tests, we propose the following organisation to help with the use of the base of tests:

• before the building of the new version, each developer, if he wishes it, can merge his branch with trunk_for_test and run the base of tests to verify the impact of the changes commited in his branch.
• the first brick in the building of the next SURFEX OFFLINE version 8 is the branch NEW_PREP, that includes all the contents of trunk_for_test and was used to validate the base of tests. In the same time, this branch was also validated by the base of tests. After NEW_PREP, the developpers can test the compatibility of their new versions with the developments immediately preceeding (incremental testings).