cvs status shortcomings

[Daniel M. Quinlan]

The output from cvs status occasionally is lacking some
essential
information, which makes it more difficult to fix some real
problems.
A little extra information would simplify things
considerably.

Here are two examples:

1) This is the stderr output from "cvs status":

    cvs status: warning: directory CVS specified in argument
    cvs status: but CVS uses CVS for its own purposes;
skipping CVS directory
    cvs status: Examining .
    cvs status: Examining anza
    cvs status: Examining anza/db
    cvs status: Examining anza/db/2003
    cvs status: Examining anza/db/2003/082
    cvs status: Examining anza/logs
    cvs status: Examining anza/logs/orbgenloc_logs
    cvs status: Examining knet
    cvs status: Examining knet/db
    cvs status: Examining knet/db/2003
    cvs status: Examining knet/db/2003/082
    cvs status: Examining knet/logs

Now it's actually complaining that it found a CVS directory
inside a
CVS directory, but where?

    % find . -name CVS
    ./anza/logs/orbgenloc_logs/CVS
    ./anza/logs/CVS
    ./anza/db/CVS
    ./anza/db/2003/082/CVS
    ./anza/db/2003/CVS
    ./anza/CVS
    ./knet/logs/CVS
    ./knet/db/2003/082/CVS
    ./knet/db/2003/CVS
    ./knet/db/CVS
    ./knet/CVS
    ./knet/CVS/CVS
    ./CVS

It would have been lots easier if the error message
mentioned where it found
this problem.

2). This is stdout output:

   
===================================================================
    File: simple            Status: Locally Added

       Working revision:    New file!
       Repository revision: No revision control file
       Sticky Tag:          (none)
       Sticky Date:         (none)
       Sticky Options:      (none)

Again, there's no indication of where the new file simple
is; usually the Repository
Revision line gives a clue, but since it's not in the
repository, there's no clue
here.  Again, one has to resort to find.

Neither of these are problems if you're only dealing with
one directory, but
when the directory tree is many levels deep, it gets to be
pretty annoying.

-- 
Daniel M. Quinlan                           danq@brtt.com
Boulder Real Time Technologies, Inc   http://www.brtt.com