Re: Understanding problems with NFS & CVS.

[Larry Jones]

Paul Sander writes:
> 
> I didn't bother to mention this because CVS doesn't use these capabilities.
> Its locking is done by mkdir, which is atomic even over NFS.

That depends on your definition of "atomic".  While the actual creation
of the directory is atomic, the system call from the client's
perspective is not (at least as of V2).  The net result is that the
client can see the mkdir fail with EEXIST when it actually executed
successfully.  This would cause CVS to think that it had failed to
obtain a lock when it actually had and thus result in a lock that no one
owns that would have to be removed by hand.  As I said before, however,
no one has ever reported that actually happening in practice.

-Larry Jones

In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research
to finding a cure for jerks. -- Calvin