RE: Finding out what has been done on a branch

[Jim.Hyslop]

O'Rourke, Brian [mailto:address@hidden wrote:
> Could someone tell me how to get some sort of output
> describing what has been done on a particular branch
> since its creation?

cvs diff -rBasePoint -rBranchTag

> My original thought was to use
> rdiff, but I don't believe it's possible to specify both
> branch and date at the same time...
Specifying both date and branch won't be necessary, and indeed will confuse
the matter, since the date of the base point will be different from file to
file.

> My goal is to find out exactly what bugfixes have been done
> on each branch, so I can ensure that all branches have all
> the proper bugfixes applied. Ideally each new branch would have
> been tagged at its creation, but this hasn't happened.
No, sorry, this is not "an ideal", it is the proper procedure.

> Can I
> still get this information readily?
In short, no. The key word, of course, is "readily". You *can* get the
information, but without the symbolic tag indicating the base of the branch,
you'll have to issue a unique diff command for each file in the repository:

cvs di -r1.1 -rBranchTag file1
cvs di -r1.3 -rBranchTag file2
cvs di -r1.1 -rBranchTag file3

and so on (now you see *why* tagging a branch at its creation is a
requirement, not an ideal).

You should be able to write a script that will issue a 'cvs log -h' on the
file, parse the output to extract the base revision for the branch (you'll
have to do this anyway to get the commands above), and apply a symbolic tag
to that revision. If you write this script, be sure it handles the case of a
branch from a branch, e.g. the output of cvs log shows:

symbolic names:
   abranch: 1.1.0.2
   branch_from_branch: 1.1.2.3.0.4

The base point for branch_from_branch will be revision 1.1.2.3

--
Jim Hyslop
Senior Software Designer
Leitch Technology International Inc. (<http://www.leitch.com/>)
Columnist, C/C++ Users Journal (<http://www.cuj.com/experts>)