Cleanup branches to avoid confusion

[janiversen]

I suggest to clean up the branches in the repo, primarily to avoid confusion but also to get an overview of which branches are still in development.

A) The following branches have been merged, and therefore can be deleted without problems:

• dev-rebase
• Fix-ModbusTCP _in_waiting not defined. #657
• home-assit-fix-Modbus RTU (serial) connection fails after first command in 2.5.1, (works in 2.3.0) #629
• test-fixes
• 2.5.0, identical to the v2.5.0 release tag,
• revert-536-use_hexlify_packets
• Broadcast error on repl client #515-Fix-Repl-Broadcast
• asyncio-bug-fixes
• fix-docs
• pymodbus-2.2.0
• gh-pages-update
• dev3.7
• Issue with read_input_registers in version 2.1.0 #353-Error-Reading-Registers
• Registers in Database DataStore cant be read from remote client #139-SqlDb-Context
• pymodbus-2.1.0
• sneaky-twisted
• pymodbus-repl
• Enable using existing asyncio loop  #326-Use-Existing-Loop
• Prepare for 2.0.0 #254-Backward-Comaptibility
• downloas-badge

B) The following branches have not had commits in years so they seem abandoned and thus can be deleted:

• revert-520-dev
• travis-osx
• Extension hook to support messages with custom function codes #357-Custom-Function
• gh-pages
• codecov-experiment
• RTU framer stuck in infinite loop #333-Infinite-Loop
• repl-improvements
• patch-307
• dev-1.5.0
• async-updates

C) These branches are being changed as part of the new setup, and should be deleted:

• 3.0.0, the content is in dev, and once released it should be a tag
• **dev3.x", the content is in dev, and it is confusing as to where development takes place

D) These branches seems to have commits not yet in dev, and could be active ?

• dev2x, no commits last 8 month

E) These branches are active development/release branches and should not be touched:

• dev, development branch (new default)
• 3.0.0-black used to find black problems
• master, release branch (push should be prohibited, unless when making a release)
• 2.5.3, identical to the v2.5.3 release tag, good to have if we one day need to make 2.5.4

When we have an agreement I volunteer to do the cleanup (delete A,B and C)

I will update the list according to the comments received.

[janiversen]

@dhoomakethu this is one where I really need your input and opinion.

[dhoomakethu]

@janiversen

• A can be deleted straight forward
• From B gh-pages was intendend at creating github page @ pymodbus.github.io , I need to check if its really required.
• Also from B please hold on with deleting repl-improvements , I will double confirm if there are any pending changes in there which needs to be in dev
• 3.0.0 branch needs to be available for some more time as we have 3 releases made out of it.
• dev3.x cane be deleted as I agree it causes confusion and so is dev2x

Thanks for taking this up. Appreciate.

[janiversen]

Done now we are down to:

  remotes/upstream/2.5.3
  remotes/upstream/3.0.0 (needs to go before releasing 3.0.0)
  remotes/upstream/3.0.0-black
  remotes/upstream/dev
  remotes/upstream/gh-pages (awaiting judgement)
  remotes/upstream/master
  remotes/upstream/repl-improvements (awaiting judgement)