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RE: How well does CVS handle other types of data?


From: Greg A. Woods
Subject: RE: How well does CVS handle other types of data?
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 17:47:18 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Lan Barnes [mailto:address@hidden
> 
> I really fail to see the technical reason for deprecating using CVS
> archives to store -- and tag -- binaries necessary for a build. The
> disk space involved is a nonissue for us (space is cheap), and the
> issue of avoiding simultaneous edits exists under any system.

No, it most certainly does not!  Systems that do not support branching
and concurrent editing automatically avoid the issue in the first place!

Perhaps you should look at Aegis, and BCS too....  or any versioning
system that does not support concurrent editing and branching and/or
which is based on the primary concept of maintaining one stable baseline.

> I could wish that this almost visceral disdain for binary source that some
> in the CVS community seem to feel would soften a bit. Binary source is a
> reality of many projects.

I think you're missing the point.  CVS does not fully support
non-mergable files.  Period.  It cannot, by the very virtue of its
design goals!  What little support it gives is completely misleading
and almost always leads to future problems!

> I agree that a totally binary project might be
> better served by some other tool. But if I'm dealing with an icon or .gif
> that has changed from release to release, especially in size, then I damn
> well want it to be archived with version labels.

So put your non-mergable files in some other tracking system (even one
so simple as to use pathname-based identifiers), and modify your build
system sources (eg. scripts and makefiles) so that they will implicitly
match up your CVS tags with the identifiers used for the non-mergable
file repository!  Doins this is so simple it's child's play and it
completely and totally avoids all issues with binary file handling in CVS!

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <address@hidden>     <address@hidden>
Planix, Inc. <address@hidden>;   Secrets of the Weird <address@hidden>



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