Re: renaming under CVS

[Noel Yap]

--- "Mark D. Baushke" <address@hidden> wrote:
> Noel wrote:
> 
> >Let me explain so even you can understand:
> Developer A should be able
> >to modify a file while developer B renames it.  The
> merge should go
> >gracefully and seemlessly regardless of who checked
> in first since
> >there is no conflict.  But this isn't true when
> using CVS.
> 
> Well, even in other systems that do version control
> of directories,
> the above is not usually that peaceful (cf,
> ClearCase).

I don't recall running into any glitches when using CC
in this scenario.  What sort of problems have you
encountered?

> Once long ago in a dim memory I recall on some
> mailing list we talked
> about the possibility of adding version control to
> directories.
> 
> It is possible to extend cvs to deal with renames of
> directories and
> files, it just requires a lot of work.
> 
> Right now cvs gets very confused if you create a
> subdirectory foo and
> also manage to have a foo,v in the same directory.
> Clean up that
> glitch by making a ,v file with the same name as a
> directory be a
> special version controlled entity that controls the
> names of files in
> that directory and you have the basis of a solution
> to version
> controlling names...
> 
> Of course, this means an extra few checks for files
> with the same
> names as directories and it also means coming up
> with a reasonable
> format to describe versioned elements for the
> directory and what it
> means to move a file to a different directory.
> 
> The biggest downside here is the performance hit of
> needing to look
> for a ,v file to shadow every directory. However, it
> may also mean
> that support for something like a symbolic link
> might also be possible
> and I know of a number of people that would like to
> see those added to
> what cvs is able to track.

What I was thinking of was to place all the archive
files in one directory.  This would, of course, break
some usage of permissioning, but I think it might be
better to permission on a per-module basis, anyway. 
If this idea doesn't fly too well, I'll need to think
up of some other scheme.

I don't like the idea of versioning symlinks.  I think
it's a hairy proposition even in CC (eg what about
platform independence, should we start versioning
other file types, ...).

Noel


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