Re: changing module names, preserving history

[Mark E. Hamilton]

Sean Brown wrote:
> I've inhereted a cvs repository with a whole bunch of modules from a
> previous IT director who, apparently, had never heard of naming
> conventions.  I'd like to rename the modules, but I'm afraid of losing
> the history associated with them.
>
> I've been told that I can simply SSH in, change to root,  and change
> the names of the module direcotries and all history will be preserved.
>
> So, let's say:
>
> CVSROOT=/home/cvs/cvsroot
>
> and there is a module in their named "badly_named_module."  It would
> be /home/cvs/cvsroot/badly_named_module.  If I changed the name of the
> directory to /home/cvs/cvsroot/perfectly_named_module, would all of
> the files contained therein keep their history?

Yes, all the files therein would keep their history.

However, the reason this is usually not a good idea is that you will 
never be able to reproduce an old version of your hierarchy. For 
instance, if you check out yesterday's code (using either a tag or the 
-D option) you won't get 'badly_named_module' in your working directory; 
you'll get 'perfectly_named_module', which didn't really exist in your 
hierarchy yesterday or when the tag was created. In fact, it will be as 
if 'badly_named_module' never existed.

If you and your users can live with that then it's not a problem.

Note that any checked out working directories will be broken. You should 
have  anyone with files to be committed to that hierarchy commit them 
before renaming, and then have them remove the module from their working 
directory and check out the new one.

Also, any scripts that depend on the name will need to be changed, and 
older versions will never work (since they contain a name that never 
existed! ;) )

--
----------------
Mark E. Hamilton
Orion International Technologies, Inc.
Sandia National Laboratory, NM.
505-844-7666