Re: shared working directories and advisory locks (Was: quick cvs question)

[Noel Yap]

--- Paul Tomsic <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi, Noel.
> Sorry to email you directly, but I was going thru
> the
> archive of the CVS mailing list and found an answer
> that you posted on 24.may.2002 regarding "reserved
> locks"

Please send requests to address@hidden in the
future.  (Also, a more specific Subject: would be
nice; I typically delete email with very general
subjects).

> I "think" that we need to use reserved locks b/c
> we've
> got multiple developers using the same "workspace"
> b/c
> it's a web project.  It doesnt' seem to make sense
> (to
> me) to have each developer use their own workspace,
> b/c to see their changes, they'd have to have a
> virt.web server pointing to their workspace, no?
> 
> Am I way off the mark here?   
> 
> I'm new to the CVS implementation, so I'm open for
> suggestion.  We're developing a web-app using
> JSPs/APACHE/Tomcat and beans.

CVS is horrendous when sharing working directories.  I
think it has something to do with file ownership and
possibly permissioning.

One can view working directories as virtual branches. 
If one has a working directory per task, one can
separate each change set from the others.  So, my
usual advice is to have one separate working directory
for each task or change set (and thereby use a form of
the Branch Per Task Pattern as described at
http://www.enteract.com/~bradapp/acme/branching/patterns.html#BranchPerTask).

Since you're using Apache/Tomcat, it shouldn't be too
difficult for each developer to have their own web/app
servers running and pointing to their own working
directories.

Going back to "reserved locks", the patch has been
renamed to the more appropriate "advisory locks"
since:
1. It's up to the users to place advisory locks.
2. Users can override advisory locks.

whereas, IMHO, reserved locks are forced by the server
and cannot be overridden by the user.

HTH,
Noel

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