FW: Do people use the CVSROOT/modules file?

[Tom Copeland]

Thanks to Mark Cooper for the informative reply...

Tom

===========================
OK, say I have 3 projects in CVS, lets call them project-A, project-B
and 
project-C.

I also have a number of 3rd party development tools, also stored in cvs.

Lets say that in order for project-C to be built, it also needs
project-B, 
and that project-B in order to be built requires project-A. This isn't
an 
unreasonable scenario, and one I have quite a few occurrences of.

Lets further assume that in order to build project-A it must use some of

those aforementioned 3rd party tools.

Lets then assume I have a new (to the project) developer, and I want to 
give him some concise instructions to be able to get hold of project-C
and 
work on it, then build it. I tell him "using cvs, check out
C-PROJECT-ALL" 
- he does this, and by issuing the one command line instruction "cvs 
checkout C-PROJECT-ALL" he obtains a complete set of applicable build 
tools, the source files and/or distributables for project-A, the source 
files and/or deliverables for project-B and the source for project-C.

How?

In the MODULES file I have entries like this:

BUILD-TOOLS -a build-tools/ant-1.5.1 build-tools/junit 
build-tools/jndi-1.2.1 build-tools/j2sdk-1.2.1-NT 
build-tools/java_xml_winter_01 build-tools/DB2Driver-v7.2FP7 
build-tools/pmd-0.9 build-tools/xalan-j_2_4_0
LATEST-BUILD-TOOLS -a build-tools/thingummy-widget1.0-NT..............
A-PROJECT &BUILD-TOOLS &project-A
B-PROJECT &A-PROJECT &project-B
C-PROJECT -&B-PROJECT &project-C
C-PROJECT-ALL &LATEST-BUILD-TOOLS &C-PROJECT

With a little forethought and the use of alias (-a) and ampersand (&) 
modules you can set things up so that an absolute minimum of cvs
commands 
are used by your users to check out everything they need for a related 
task, thus eliminating much user error in the process of obtaining a 
suitable development environment.

Of course, nothing prevents anyone from doing things the hard way. If
you 
haven't had occasion to delve into the modules file before and have been

using cvs for a while, chances are that you won't need it. It doesn't
hurt 
to be aware of possibilities though does it?

Hope this helps.



Mark Cooper
Reuse Manager
Microlise Limited
http://www.microlise.co.uk
mailto:address@hidden
===========================