Re: [Sablevm-developer] suggestion: sablevm developer doc

[Chris P. <chr...@ma...>]

There's also extensive user-based support out there for CVS, and people 
can help you with most of the problems you encounter.

http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/info-cvs/2003-03/index.html

As far as I am aware, the primary problems with CVS are directory 
deletions, renaming, and atomic commits.  That and it restricts you to 
certain branching models if you don't want a big headache.

There are, however, many useful scripts people have written to make 
working with CVS easier.  Besides, it seems that we don't really have a 
choice but to work with CVS, and we want some kind of branch / trunk 
scheme, so rather than debate the relative merits of CVS / PRCS / 
Subversion, we should just work with what we have.

Chris

Chris Pickett wrote:

> Prof. Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:
>
>>OK guys, you want a proof that CVS is broken.
>>
>>I'll eventually prepare an example for you, but not now; I don't have
>>the time.  The example goes along the lines of: You make 2 branches,
>>you "cvs add ; cvs commit" distinct files with the same name on the
>>respective branches, then CVS loses one of the two files without
>>warning.
>>
>>Also, I encourage you to experiment maintaining a branch and trying to
>>merge trunk updates into the branch.  CVS is good at the reverse
>>(e.g. merging branch modifs into the trunk), but it not very helpful
>>at tracking trunk changes in a branch.
>>  
>>
> No ... the way Mozilla works is every once in a while, it takes a 
> snapshot of development on the trunk and creates a branch.  There is a 
> new branch for every release.  There is no maintenance of the branch 
> ... you simply take your trunk snapshot and keep working on the branch 
> until it is fixed.  Then, when the release occurs, you merge the 
> branch changes into the trunk (which CVS is good at, as you said).  
> The whole point is that once the branch is made, trunk changes don't 
> affect the branch anymore -- and they shouldn't either ... it will 
> have to wait until the next release.
>
> http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap.html
>
>>FYI, you might want to learn about how robust merging works.  PRCS
>>identified 14 distinct situations:
>>
>>http://prcs.sourceforge.net/merge.html
>>
>>The interesting thing is that PRCS actually asks you before performing
>>an action.
>>
>>Additional reading identifying some of CVS's problems & advantages:
>>http://prcs.sourceforge.net/cvs-vs-prcs.html
>>http://prcs.sourceforge.net/kingdon.html
>>  
>>
> I've read all the PRCS stuff before, but it has problems of its own 
> too (ask Ondrej).  I don't know what SubVersion is like, I would be 
> open to trying it.  But I don't know if SF supports it.
>
> Chris
>
>>On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 07:23:38AM -0500, Chris Pickett wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>Grzegorz B. Prokopski wrote:
>>>
>>>    
>>>
>>>>W li?cie z wto, 18-03-2003, godz. 01:17, Prof. Etienne M. Gagnon pisze: 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>>>On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 03:53:20PM -0500, Chris Pickett wrote:
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>        
>>>>>
>>>>>>How about . . . we just have a development branch and the main trunk. 
>>>>>>Anyone can hack away on the development branch (obviously trying not to 
>>>>>>break things), and then once in a while Etienne merges changes into the 
>>>>>>main trunk.  Or some other such multi-developer version control idiom.
>>>>>>    
>>>>>>
>>>>>>          
>>>>>>
>>>>>The problem, with CVS, is that when you add something new on a branch,
>>>>>it is considered as head and thus shows up in the main trunk and in
>>>>>the Changelog.
>>>>>  
>>>>>
>>>>>        
>>>>>
>>>>Are you sure? CVS docs say sth. rather opposite, see
>>>>http://www.loria.fr/~molli/cvs/doc/cvs_5.html#SEC49
>>>>
>>>>"CVS allows you to isolate changes onto a separate line of development,
>>>>known as a branch. When you change files on a branch, those changes do
>>>>not appear on the main trunk or other branches."
>>>>
>>>>Projects like Mozilla use CVS in the model of HEAD (unstable,
>>>>development version) and branches (stable releases). If CVS weren't
>>>>suitable for this - would they use it?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>I kind of like the Mozilla model of development.  I think it makes more 
>>>sense than having a development branch, actually.  It says, "If you want 
>>>a stable release, don't check out from CVS but rather get a tarball.  
>>>And if you really want to check out the sources in the tarball from the 
>>>release branch, you can."
>>>
>>>CVS may have problems but then again 99% of projects use it so it can't 
>>>be that severely broken.
>>>
>>>Chris
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>  
>>