RE: always on mainline

[Matthew Herrmann]

Hi Dave,

> Any suggestions for forcing one directory of a repository to always
> be mainline, or if it is branched, always be in sync with
> top of tree of the mainline.

I think what you are saying here is a complicated synonym for a simple
concept -- "not under version control". There is no link between the version
number of the software and the version of the tools which are being used.
So, ultimately, CVS is just serving as a file transfer protocol. However,
CVS might still be useful to keep a record of why you have made changes to
tools (if you feel this is important). To do this, create a repository
called "projectname_tools".

You can check it out when you check out your source code by adding a line to
your build script saying "cvs co project_tools". Don't include it in the
module, since this will cause it to be tagged in "cvs rtag commands" and to
be included in the regular checkout semantics, which you want to bypass.

Another (better) possibility is to use rsync with your server. Include rsync
in a batch file which must be run before compiling the software or to
prepare it for compilation. If the files are up-to-date, rsync will be quite
fast and just do nothing. Otherwise it will automatically download new
files. Rsync is better because:
- you always want the latest versions anyway
- changes to binary files will be very quickly transferred
- you won't run into problems with 100MB installers
- users can bypass it by copying the files from a CD, and if source and
destination match, there is no issue, whereas CVS might still try to
download them.

Use cvs for these files if you don't have cygwin installed, if you are
versioning 68K EXE files or scripts, and if you want an audit trail for why
they were changed. if you go with cvs, make sure everyone is trained to use
"cvs rtag" instead of "cvs tag" or you will end up with lots of misleading
tags accidentally making it into your tools repository. (Another reason why
I really dislike 'cvs tag'.)

My 5 cents.

Best Regards,

Matthew Herrmann
--------------------------------------
VB6/SQL/Java/CVS Consultancy
Far Edge Technology
http://www.faredge.com.au/

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Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2003 09:35:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: David A Uebele <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: always on mainline
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I'm looking into adding a "tools" section to a source repository.
It would be mostly build tools, specific to the repository.
The tools would be for all branches. I'd like the tools section
to always be on the mainline.

Any suggestions for forcing one directory of a repository to always
be mainline, or if it is branched, always be in sync with
top of tree of the mainline.

thanks
dave
--
Dave Uebele        address@hidden        360-876-4587